Hardness Quotes

• I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Heart, Thinking, Political

  Theodore Roosevelt (2015). “Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century”, p.36, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.

  Giorgos Seferis

  Strong, Mean, Pride

  66 Copy quote

• Hardness shatters; strength endures.

  Robert Jordan

  Endure

  7 Copy quote

• Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness.

  Laozi

  Life, Wise, Wisdom

  46 Copy quote

• Justice must be blind to the hardness or softness of a man's hands, as well as to the leanness or fatness of his pocketbook

  B. C. Forbes

  Men, Hands, Justice

  22 Copy quote

• The hardness of a diamond is part of its usefulness, but its true value is in the light that shines through it.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Inspiring, Light, Shining

  B.K.S. Iyengar, John J. Evans, Douglas Abrams (2006). “Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom”, p.27, Rodale

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• One must never have spared oneself, one must have acquired hardness as a habit to be cheerful and in good spirits in the midst of nothing but hard truths.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Cheerful, Spirit, Habit

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.720, Modern Library

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• Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought.

  Victor Hugo

  Writing, Play, Tyrants

  "Les misérables".

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• The hard must become habit. The habit must become easy. The easy must become beautiful.

  Doug Henning

  Inspirational, Beautiful, Work

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• The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

  Pope Paul VI

  Art, Lust, Crystals

  27 Copy quote

• The thing which grieves and oppresses my heart with respect to poor Scotland, is the hardness of heart manifest in the levity and cruelty with which they speak of others.

  Edward Irving

  Respect, Heart, Grieving

  30 Copy quote

• Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity.

  Matthew Arnold

  Gay, Years, Age

  Matthew Arnold (1954). “A selection of his poems”

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• May your character not be a writing upon the sand, but an inscription upon the rock!

  Charles Spurgeon

  Writing, Character, Rocks

  117 Copy quote

• I am a hard person to love but when I love, I love really hard.

  Tupac Shakur

  Love, Rapper, Personality

  203 Copy quote

• The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Crush, Spiritual, Men

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.389, Penguin

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• The hardness of the human heart makes no sense.

  Rob Bell

  Heart, Humans, Human Heart

  4 Copy quote

• Weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.

  Andrei Tarkovsky

  Winning, Men, Expression

  "Fictional character: Stalker". "Stalker", May 1979.

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• Don't think being 'religious' means becoming harsh or hard. When Allah enters a heart, He softens it--He doesn't harden it.

  Yasmin Mogahed

  Inspirational, God, Religious

  44 Copy quote

• I place my trust in You, O adorable Blood, our Redemption, our regeneration. Fall, drop by drop, into the hearts that have wandered from You and soften their hardness.

  Agnes of Rome

  Fall, Heart, Blood

  88 Copy quote

• Hardness ever of hardness is mother.

  William Shakespeare

  Mother, Tyranny

  William Shakespeare (1868). “The Works of William Shakspere”, p.598

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• What is more malleable is always superior over that which is immovable. This is the principle of controlling things by going along with them, of mastery through adaptation.

  Jaimal Yogis

  Principles, Mastery, Adaptation

  Mu Soeng, Jaimal Yogis (2010). “Saltwater Buddha: A Surfers Quest to Find Zen on the Sea (Large Print 16pt)”, p.72, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Sigh... I have learned that *everything* is so hard...except what Allah makes easy. So we must *beg* Him to make it easy on us.

  Yasmin Mogahed

  God, Prayer, Islamic

  9 Copy quote

• All the sands of the world even when they unite together cannot create the hardness of a single rock!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Rocks, Together, World

  4 Copy quote

• If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hard-line, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans? Maybe he's not the problem.

  Jon Stewart

  Funny, Usa, America

  40 Copy quote

• Much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people.

  Jane Addams

  People, Imagination, Empathy

  Jane Addams (2016). “Democracy and Social Ethics”, p.13, Youcanprint

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