Tenderness Quotes - Page 12

• In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it; for no species of falsehood is more frequent than flattery, to which the coward is betrayed by fear, the dependent by interest, and the friend by tenderness: those who are neither servile nor timorous are yet desirous to bestow pleasure; and, while unjust demands of praise continue to be made, there will always be some whom hope, fear, or kindness will dispose to pay them.

  Samuel Johnson

  Kindness, Men, Order

  Samuel Johnson (1797). “The Beauties of Samuel Johnson, Etc. (A New Edition, Being the Ninth.).”, p.101

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• When I look like this into the blue sky, it seems so deep, so peaceful, so full of a mysterious tenderness, that I could lie for centuries and wait for the dawning of the face of God out of the awe-inspiring loving-kindness.

  George MacDonald

  God, Kindness, Lying

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• The world may not applaud us for wiping running noses, driving in carpools, or talking with our teenager into the wee hours of the morning. And until they are trained, our children might not thank us either. But as we set aside our own selfish desires and glorify God by joyfully serving our children, we are pursuing true greatness according to the Bible. Let us do so with tenderness, affection, and with a smile!

  Carolyn Mahaney

  Running, Morning, Children

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• Suffering predisposes the mind to devoutness; and most young girls, prompted by instinctive tenderness, lean towards mysticism, the obscurer side of religion.

  Honore de Balzac

  Girl, Mind, Suffering

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• You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs―the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limbs, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate―the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Children, Artist, Flames

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.72, Vintage

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• Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she bears witness to God’s love. Be missionaries of God’s tenderness!

  Pope Francis

  Christian, Love Is, Bears

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• War is all we've been taught, but there are other ways to live. We can find them, Akiva. We can invent them. This is the beginning, here." She touched his chest and felt a rush of love for the heart that moved his blood, for his smooth skin and his scars and his unsoldierly tenderness. She took his hand and pressed it to her breast and said, "We are the beginning.

  Laini Taylor

  War, Heart, Blood

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• Of course none of those men was suitable. Half were after your fortune, and as for the other half—well, you would have reduced them to tears within a month.” “Such tenderness for your youngest child,” Hyacinth muttered. “It quite undoes me.

  Julia Quinn

  Children, Men, Tears

  Julia Quinn (2005). “It's in his kiss”

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• What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom: conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and decision. And the institution of the family, and the emotions that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring, parental self-devotion, all found their justification and support in the imminent dangers of the young.

  H. G. Wells

  Strong, Wall, Men

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• But we are alone, darling child, terribly, isolated each from the other; so fierce is the world's ridicule we cannot speak or show our tenderness; for us, death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of loneliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart.

  Truman Capote

  Laughter, Children, Loneliness

  Truman Capote (2007). “Other Voices, Other Rooms”, p.124, Vintage

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• Motherhood is the greatest potential influence either for good or ill in human life. The mother's image is the first that stamps itself on the unwritten page of the young child's mind. It is her caress that first awakens a sense of security; her kiss, the first realization of affection; her sympathy and tenderness, the first assurance that there is love in the world.

  David O. McKay

  Mother, Children, Kissing

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• His contagious conviction that our love was unique and desperate infected me with an anxious sickness; soon we would learn to treat one another with the circumspect tenderness of comrades who are amputees, for we were surrounded by the most moving images of evanesecence, fireworks, morning glories, the old, children. But the most moving of these images were the intagible relfections of ourselves we saw in one another's eyes, reflections of nothing but appearances, in a city dedicated to seeming, and, try as we might to possess the essence of each other's otherness, we would inevitably fail.

  Angela Carter

  Morning, Children, Moving

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• Our identity rests in God's relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ.

  Brennan Manning

  Jesus, Identity, Christ

  Brennan Manning (2015). “Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging”, p.35, NavPress

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• If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose deep inflicted lacerations never heal - cutting injuries and insults of serrated and poison-dripping edge - so, too, there are consolations of tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo: caressing kindnesses - loved, lingered over through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Kindness, Cutting, Clouds

  Charlotte Bronte (2009). “Villette”, p.475, The Floating Press

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• I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness.

  Robert Bly

  Relaxation, Proud

  Robert Bly (1986). “Selected poems”, Harper Perennial

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• When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something. We might realize that this is a very vulnerable and tender place, and that tenderness can go either way. We can shut down and feel resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality. (9)

  Pema Chodron

  Quality, Down And, Might

  Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.10, Shambhala Publications

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• When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Heart, Love Is, Generosity

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (1991). “The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti: 1948-1949 : Choiceless awareness”, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company

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• He refused categorically all ideas of fidelity or serious commitments. He explained that they were arbitrary and sterile. From anyone else such views would have shocked me, but I knew that in his case they did not exclude tenderness and devotion - feelings which came all the more easily to him since he was determined that they should be transient.

  Francoise Sagan

  Commitment, Views, Ideas

  FRANCOISE SAGAN (1955). “BONOUR TRISTESSE”

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• Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.

  Mitch Albom

  Substitutes, Comradeship

  Mitch Albom (2007). “Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson”, p.125, Broadway Books

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• All my life, I'd been on the receiving end of my mother's endless tenderness and vigilant care. Being allowed to care for her during her recovery was a gift – the most rewarding experience in my life.

  Kristin Chenoweth

  Mother, Recovery, Receiving

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• When prayers were ended, and his Mother had wished him good-night with that long steady look of hers which conveyed no expression of the tenderness that was in her heart, but yet had all the intensity of a blessing.

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Good Night, Mother, Prayer

  Elizabeth Gaskell (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)”, p.1031, Delphi Classics

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• The combination of physical strength and moral sincerity combined with tenderness of heart is exactly what is wanted in a husband.--Ameila Peabody

  Barbara Mertz

  Husband, Heart, Moral

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• Old people, who have felt blows and toil and known the world's hard hand, need, even more than children do, a woman's tenderness.

  Willa Cather

  Children, Blow, Hands

  Willa Cather (2010). “Vintage Cather”, p.174, Vintage

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• Fifty-four years of love and tenderness and crossness and devotion and unswerving loyalty. Without her I could have achieved a quarter of what I have achieved, not only in terms of success and career, but in terms of personal happiness.

  Noel Coward

  Loyalty, Years, Careers

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• when someone speaks he looks at a mouth, not eyes and their colors, which, it seems to him, will always alter depending on the light of a room, the minute of the day. Mouths reveal insecurity or smugness or any other point on the spectrum of character. For him they are the most intricate aspect of faces. He's never sure what an eye reveals. but he can read how mouths darken into callousness, suggest tenderness. One can often misjudge an eye from its reaction to a simple beam of sunlight.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Character, Eye, Simple

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