Gentle Quotes - Page 23

• Let me ask you outright, gentle reader, if there have not been hours, indeed whole days and weeks of your life, during which all your usual activities were painfully repugnant, and everything you believed in and valued seemed foolish and worthless?

  E. T. A. Hoffmann

  Usual, Week, Hours

  E. T. A. Hoffmann (2000). “The Golden Pot and Other Tales”, p.20, Oxford University Press, USA

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• And God says to all of us, you are no chicken; you are an eagle. Fly, eagle, fly. And God wants us to shake ourselves, spread our pinions, and then lift off and soar and rise, and rise toward the confident and the good and the beautiful. Rise towards the compassionate and the gentle and the caring. Rise to become what God intends us to be - eagles, not chickens.

  Desmond Tutu

  Inspirational, Graduation, Beautiful

  "Desmond Tutu: 'And God Says to All of Us, You Are No Chicken; You Are an Eagle'". Desmond Tutu's commencement address at Brandeis University, www.beliefnet.com. 2000.

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• Anglers...exaggerate grossly and make gentle and inoffensive creatures sound like wounded buffalo and man-eating tigers.

  Roderick Haig-Brown

  Men, Lakes, Sea

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• Amongst the instrumentalities of love and peace, surely there can be no sweeter, softer, more effective voice than that of gentle, peace-breathing music.

  Elihu Burritt

  Breathing, Voice, Peace And Love

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• There is nothing quite so gentle, deep, and irrational as running--and nothing quite so savage, so wild.

  Bernd Heinrich

  Running, Savages, Irrational

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• Do we not hear voices, gentle and great, and some of them like the voices of departed friends,— do we not hear them saying to us, Come up hither?

  William Mountford

  Voice, Departed, Come Up

  William Mountford (1858). “Euthanasy, Or Happy Talk Towards the End of Life”, p.305

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• Frightened of my futureless life, scared by my foolish anxieties, unable to see ahead and aiming nowhere, I continued ceaselessly living my ridiculously idiotic life. I was beset on all sides by invisible worries. So, I shut myself in and slept. I slept until sleep exhausted me. Spring passed, summer ended, fall came, and then winter arrived. Then, it turned into another gentle spring.

  Tatsuhiko Takimoto

  Summer, Spring, Fall

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• There is no room in the universe for the least contempt or pride; but only for a gentle and a reverent heart.

  James Martineau

  Heart, Pride, Rooms

  James Martineau (1879). “Hours of thought on sacred things, sermons”

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• Be gentle with everything in your life.

  Bryan Kest

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• The sun, a red wheel, was sinking slowly in the west. Besides being spectacularly beautiful, the early-summer sunset was exceedingly soft and gentle: black mulberry leaves turned as red as roses; pristine white acacia petals shed an enshrouding pale-green aura. Mild evening breezes made both the mulberry leaves and the acacia petals dance and whirl, filling the woods with a soft rustle.

  Mo Yan

  Beautiful, Summer, Sunset

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• Heat lingers
  As days are still long;
  Early mornings are cool
  While autumn is still young.
  Dew on the lotus
  Scatters pure perfume;
  Wind on the bamboos
  Gives off a gentle tinkling.
  I am idle and lonely,
  Lying down all day,
  Sick and decayed;
  No one asks for me;
  Thin dusk before my gates,
  Cassia blossoms inch deep.

  Bai Juyi

  Lonely, Morning, Lying

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• Once more their weird laughter of the loons comes to my ear, the distance lends it a musical, melancholy sound. For a dangerous ledge off the lighthouse island floats in on the still air the gentle trolling of a warning bell as it swings on the rocking buoy; it might be tolling for the passing of summer and sweet weather with that persistent, pensive chime.

  Celia Thaxter

  Summer, Sweet, Laughter

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• Fie, thou dishonest Satan! I call thee by the most modest terms; for I am one of those gentle ones that will use the devil himself with courtesy: sayest thou that house is dark?

  William Shakespeare

  Dark, House, Devil

  William Shakespeare (2010). “Twelfth Night”, p.79, Palgrave Macmillan

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• Implied Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway, And by her yielded, by him best receiv'd,- Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.

  John Milton

  Sweet, Pride, Delay

  John Milton, Henry John Todd (1852). “The Poetical Works of John Milton: With Notes of Various Authors; and with Some Account of the Life and Writings of Milton, Derived Principally from Original Documents in Her Majesty's State-paper Office”, p.72

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• Through Christ's satisfaction for sin, the very nature of afflictions changed with regard to believers. As death, which was, at first, the wages of sin, is now become a bed of rest (Is. 57:2); so afflictions are not the rod of God's anger, but the gentle medicine of a tender father.

  Tobias Crisp

  Christian, Father, Medicine

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• But he whose inborn worth his acts commend, Of gentle soul, to human race a friend.

  Homer

  Friendship, Race, Soul

  Homer (2013). “penelopeia, a wife's enduring love”, p.459, Lulu.com

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• Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. Therefore the Master remains serene in the midst of sorrow. Evil cannot enter his heart. Because he has given up helping, he is people's greatest help. True words seem paradoxical.

  Laozi

  Strength, Truth, Heart

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• If I profane with my unworthiest hand
  This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
  My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
  To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

  William Shakespeare

  Kissing, Hands, Two

  William Shakespeare (2007). “Romeo and Juliet”, p.46, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• While you'll feel compelled to charge forward it's often a gentle step back that will reveal to you where you and what you truly seek.

  Rasheed Ogunlaru

  Finding Yourself, Steps, Feels

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• Strange that so much suffering is caused because of the misunderstandings of God's true nature. God's heart is more gentle than the Virgin's first kiss upon the Christ. And God's forgiveness to all, to any thought or act, is more certain than our own being.

  St. Catherine of Siena

  Heart, Kissing, Suffering

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• The words given voice inside the mind are not always clear, however; they can be gentle and elliptical, what the prophets call the bat qol, the daughter of the voice of God, she who speaks in whispers and half-seen images.

  Laurie R. King

  Daughter, Voice, Mind

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• How can a man be so brave and so stupid, so gentle and so cruel, so warming and so detestable -- all at the same time?

  James Clavell

  Stupid, Men, Brave

  James Clavell (2009). “Shogun”, p.348, Dell

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• Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death. The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

  Laozi

  Life, Disciple, Tao Te Ching Leadership

  Laozi (1997). “道德经”, Vintage

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• When life begins we are tender and weak When life ends we are stiff and rigid All things, including the grass and trees, are soft and pliable in life and dry in brittle in death So the soft and supple are the companion of life While the stiff and unyielding are the companions of death An army that cannot yield will be defeated A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind Thus by Nature's own decree the hard and strong are defeated while the soft and gentle are triumphant

  Laozi

  Life, Strong, Army

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• The water of life was given to us to make us see for a while that we are more nearly men and women, more nearly kind and gentle and generous, pleasanter and stronger than without its vision there is any evidence we are.

  Bernard DeVoto

  Life, Men, Generosity

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