Andy > Andy's Quotes

“The strongest love is the love that can demonstrate its fragility.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“When you love someone, truly love them, you lay your heart open to them. You give them a part of yourself that you give to no one else, and you let them inside a part of you that only they can hurt-you literally hand them the razor with a map of where to cut deepest and most painfully on your heart and soul. And when they do strike, it’s crippling-like having your heart carved out.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.”
― Criss Jami

“What was it about relationships that made you feel so vulnerable? Oh, right. A relationship. In any relationship, you put yourself out there. You exposed all of your sensitive nerve endings and your heart and you just had to hope that you trusted the right person.”
― Courtney Cole, Every Last Kiss

“We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.”
― Frank Crane

“Vulnerability is the only authentic state. Being vulnerable means being open, for wounding, but also for pleasure. Being open to the wounds of life means also being open to the bounty and beauty. Don’t mask or deny your vulnerability: it is your greatest asset. Be vulnerable: quake and shake in your boots with it. the new goodness that is coming to you, in the form of people, situations, and things can only come to you when you are vulnerable, i.e. open.”
― Stephen Russell, Barefoot Doctor's Guide to the Tao: A Spiritual Handbook for the Urban Warrior

“The loner who looks fabulous is one of the most vulnerable loners of all.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”
― Brene Brown

“Well, any love makes us vulnerable. Whatever we love will give the gift of pain somewhere along the road. But who would live sealed in spiritual cellophane just to keep from ever being hurt? There are a few people like that. I'm sorry for them. I think they are as good as dead.”
― Gladys Bagg Taber, Harvest at Stillmeadow

“But, of course, putting yourself out there takes vulnerability. Vulnerability is hard, and we, as a rule, tend to go for what’s easy; by that logic, closing ourselves off is the easiest thing in the world. We quote the words of others to do our talking for us, send each other links to articles and stories in lieu of actual conversation, post pretty pictures to adequately convey our current state of mind, all to avoid having to proffer a single identifiable human emotion. We keep in touch with relatives by emailing them mawkishly inspirational chain letters once in a while. We regurgitate memes to approximate the feeling of being in the loop.”
― Phil Roland

“You can change the world again, instead of protecting yourself from it.”
― Julien Smith, The Flinch

“If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. Like the old knights in war time, we must sleep with helmet and breastplate buckled on, for the arch-deceiver will seize our first unguarded hour to make us his prey. The Lord keep us watchful in all seasons, and give us a final escape from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version

“Human beings, whatever their backgrounds, are more open than we think, that their behavior cannot be confidently predicted from their past, that we are all creatures vulnerable to new thoughts, new attitudes.

And while such vulnerability creates all sorts of possibilities, both good and bad, its very existence is exciting. It means that no human being should be written off, no change in thinking deemed impossible.”
― Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“The well heeded well heard.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“They yearn for what they fear for.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“The day that man allows true love to appear, those things which are well made will fall into cofusion and will overturn everything we believe to be right and true.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
― Stephen King

“For everything in this journey of life we are on, there is a right wing and a left wing: for the wing of love there is anger; for the wing of destiny there is fear; for the wing of pain there is healing; for the wing of hurt there is forgiveness; for the wing of pride there is humility; for the wing of giving there is taking; for the wing of tears there is joy; for the wing of rejection there is acceptance; for the wing of judgment there is grace; for the wing of honor there is shame; for the wing of letting go there is the wing of keeping. We can only fly with two wings and two wings can only stay in the air if there is a balance. Two beautiful wings is perfection. There is a generation of people who idealize perfection as the existence of only one of these wings every time. But I see that a bird with one wing is imperfect. An angel with one wing is imperfect. A butterfly with one wing is dead. So this generation of people strive to always cut off the other wing in the hopes of embodying their ideal of perfection, and in doing so, have created a crippled race.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Is there some lesson on how to be friends?
I think what it means is that central to living
a life that is good is a life that's forgiving.
We're creatures of contact regardless of whether
we kiss or we wound. Still, we must come together.
Though it may spell destruction, we still ask for more--
since it beats staying dry but so lonely on shore.
So we make ourselves open while knowing full well
it's essentially saying "please, come pierce my shell.”
― David Rakoff

“People are really trying their best. Just like being happy and sad, you will find yourself on both sides of the equation many times over your lifetime, either saying or hearing the wrong thing. Let's all give each other a pass, shall we?”
― David Rakoff, Half Empty

“What remains of your past if you didn't allow yourself to feel it when it happened? If you don't have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories.”
― David Rakoff, Fraud

“If there's a thing I've learned in my life it's to not be afraid of the responsibility that comes with caring for other people. What we do for love: those things endure. Even if the people you do them for don't”
― Cassandra Clare

“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.”
― Joseph Campbell

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone.
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.”
― Adam Lindsay Gordon