Weakness Quotes - page 17
Just as the purpose of eating is to satisfy hunger, not greed, so the sex instinct is designed for the propagation of the species according to natural law, never for the kindling of insatiable longings. Destroy wrong desires now; otherwise they will follow you after the astral body is torn from its physical casing. Even when the flesh is weak, the mind should be constantly resistant. If temptation assails you with cruel force, overcome it by impersonal analysis and indomitable will. Every natural passion can be mastered. Conserve your powers. Be like the capacious ocean, absorbing within all the tributary rivers of the senses. Small yearnings are openings in the reservoir of your inner peace, permitting healing waters to be wasted in the desert soil of materialism. The forceful activating impulse of wrong desire is the greatest enemy to the happiness of man. Roam in the world as a lion of self-control; see that the frogs of weakness don't kick you around.
Yukteswar Giri
Allah seeks you to thank Him and assigns to you His affairs. He has allowed time in the limited field (of life) so that you may vie with each other in seeking the reward (of Paradise). Therefore, tight up your girdles and wrap up the skirts. High courage and dinners do not go together. Sleep causes weakness in the big affairs of the day and (its) darkness obliterates the memories of courage.
Ali
If you ever feel any pride or vanity on account of your sway and rule over your subjects then think of the supreme sway and rule of the Lord over the Universe, the extent of His creations, the supremacy of His Might and Glory, His Power to do things which you cannot even dream of doing and His control over you which is more dominating than that which you can ever achieve over anything around you. Such thoughts will cure your mental weakness, will keep you away from vanity and rebellion (against Allah), will reduce your arrogance and haughtiness and will take you back to the sanity which you had foolishly deserted... Try carefully to realize that a ruler can create goodwill in the minds of his subjects and can make them faithful and sincere to him only when he is kind and considerate to them, when he reduces their troubles, when he does not oppress them and when he never asks for things which are beyond their power. These are the principles which you should keep in mind and act upon".
Ali
It [his participating in the 7th exhibition of the Impressionists, combined with showing his work on the official Salon] isn't exactly a joy, but as I have said, it lets me out of the revolutionary side of the business, which I'm nervous of... It's a little weakness which I hope will be forgiven me [by the other impressionists]... Delacroix used to say, quite rightly, that a painter should win as many honours as possible.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
A filmed play like this doesn't offer the sensual enjoyment that movies can offer, but you don't go to it for that; you go for O'Neill's crude, prosaic virtuosity, which is also pure American poetry, and for the kind of cast that rarely gathers for a stage production. [...] Larry, a self-hating alcoholic, is a weak man and a windbag, but Ryan brings so much understanding to Larry's weakness that the play achieves new dimensions. Ryan becomes O'Neill for us; he has O'Neill's famous "tragic handsomeness" and at the end, when Larry is permanently "iced" - that is, stripped of illusion - we can see that this is the author's fantasy of himself [...] Fredric March interprets Harry Hope with so much quiet tenderness that when Harry regains his illusions and we see March's muscles tone up, we don't know whether to smile for the character or the actor.
Pauline Kael
All that tends to... debase them into selfish egotism, to awaken an infatuation for littlenesses, and a disregard for greatness, you should reject or repress. In the system of the French revolution that which is immoral is impolitic, and what tends to corrupt is counter-revolutionary. Weaknesses, vices, prejudices are the road to monarchy. Carried away, too often perhaps, by the force of ancient habits, as well as by the innate imperfection of human nature, to false ideas and pusillanimous sentiments, we have more to fear from the excesses of weakness, than from excesses of energy.
Maximilien Robespierre
Shall we seek for the root of our comforts within us; what God hath done, what he is to us in Christ, is the root of our comfort. In this is stability; in us is weakness. Acts of obedience are not perfect, and therefore yield not perfect peace. Faith, as an act, yields it not, but as it carries us into him, who is our perfect rest and peace; in whom we are accounted of, and received by, the Father, even as Christ himself. This is our high calling. Rest we here, and here only.
Oliver Cromwell
No one cared enough to criticise, except himself who soon began to suffer from reaching his own limits. He found that he could not be this - or that - or the other; always precisely the things he wanted to be. He had not wit or scope or force. Judges always ranked him beneath a rival, if he had any; and he believed the judges were right. His work seemed to him thin, commonplace, feeble. At times he felt his own weakness so fatally that he could not go on; when he had nothing to say, he could not say it, and he found that he had very little to say at best.
Henry Adams
I think that when you are famous every weakness is exaggerated. ... Goethe said, "Talent is developed in privacy," you know? And it's really true. ... Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you're a human being, you feel, you suffer. You're gay, you're sick, you're nervous or whatever.
Marilyn Monroe
For each of us as women, there is a dark place within where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, "Beautiful and tough as chestnut/stanchions against our nightmare of weakness” and of impotence.These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman's place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.
Audre Lorde
Radical Islam has seen us for what we are: a soft touch. It sees that political correctness is like a drug that we just can't stop injecting, even though we know it's going to kill us. And they're taking full advantage of that, turning our sense of fairness against us, and making us despise ourselves for one of our best qualities. And any concession made will be seen as a sign of weakness to be exploited further, because there is no dialogue with radical Islam. It doesn't want to be agreed with, it wants to be obeyed. It thinks it has the God-given right, aptly enough, to make the rules, not just for Muslims, but for everyone, and some of us, frankly, think that's a little bit too much to ask.
Pat Condell
