8 Quotes Tagged: frailty

And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don't like to be reminded of how frail we are — how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended.

Alas! in the clothes of the greatest potentate, what is there but a man?

Every saint has a bee in his halo.

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love.

We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.

[Jean-Christophe’s father] was not a bad man, but a half-good man, which is perhaps worse — weak, without spring, without moral strength, but for the rest, in his own opinion, a good father, a good son, a good husband, a good man — and perhaps he was good, if to be so it is enough to possess an easy kindness, which is quickly touched, and that animal affection by which a man loves his kin as a part of himself. It cannot even be said that he was very egoistic; he had not personality enough for that. He was nothing. They are a terrible thing in life, these people who are nothing. Like a dead weight thrown into the air, they fall, and must fall; and in their fall they drag with them everything that they have.

You are human and fallible.

The things that I loved were very frail. Very fragile. I didn't know that. I thought they were indestructible. They weren't.