Fragility Quotes

“Or maybe it's just that beautiful things are so easily broken by the world.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels

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

“Sometimes I wish I could walk around with a HANDLE WITH CARE sign stuck to my forehead.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“It occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkable difficult to kill.”
― Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

“Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“They sit here in the darkness, trusting. That the coffee will be hot and unpoisoned. That no raging madman will come in with a gun or bomb.

It leaves him breathless at times, how much faith people put in one another. So fragile, the social contract: we will all stand by the rules, move with care and gentleness, invest in the infrastructure, agree with the penalties of failure. That this man driving his truck down the street won't, on a whim, angle into the plate glass and end things. That the president won't let his hand hover over the red button and, in moment of rage or weakness, explode the world. The invisible tissue of civilization: so thin, so easily rendable. It's a miracle that it exists at all.”
― Lauren Groff, Arcadia

“...sometimes we go, and we try, and we suffer, and despite it all, we learn nothing. Sometimes we are left with more questions than when we started. Sometimes we do harm, despite our best efforts. We are human. We are fragile.”
― Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate

“During the film (long, miserable) he takes her hand and squeezes rhythmically as if he's milking a cow.  She's distracted by wondering if he has ever, in fact, milked a cow.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“He slid the ring onto my wedding finger. It fitted perfectly. A good omen? I tipped my hand this way and that, admiring the extravagant sparkle, and kept my truth buttoned all buttoned up.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“If I told you the few things keeping me alive,
Don’t run, don’t laugh, don’t cry.
Just forgive me for being soft in life,
I am one of those things that die”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“Standing on the lifeless fringes of life,
embracing nonexistent forms
like winds that have stopped blowing,
I would have been living in illusions,
with fossils of life’s scraps;
if your love had not embraced me.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“Is it a bird? Is it a plane? We recognize our perception often plays tricks on us. We understand we can easily mistake appearances for reality, challenging the certainty of our knowledge and facing the fragility of our truth.”
― Erik Pevernagie

“We should not fear the fragility of truth, for it creates openness to correction, learning, and growth. It fosters empathy, making inquiry, curiosity, and wisdom possible. Truth becomes less about possession and more about pursuit. (Is it a bird? Is it a plane?)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Decentralized systems can offer more resilience and antifragility, as this single point of failure does not exist.”
― Roger Spitz, Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World

“I'm not fragile," she said shortly.
"I know," he said gently. He sounded a little surprised. "I knew that the moment I met you."
She sounded surprised.
"But you should have been allowed to be,' he added softly. "You should be allowed to be.”
― Julie Anne Long, The Beast Takes a Bride

“Fragile

You cling to roses, a promise of forever,
but our hearts are made of glass and glass breaks.”
― Eirene Evripidou, Wings Forged From My Ashes: Breaking Silence, Carrying the Sky

“White girls want to be fragile like bombs
Not fragile like the flowers
Black girls aren’t even given the choice
Because our feelings simply don’t matter
We are and were never expected to be fragile”
― Ashanti Files

“The cure of fragility is through fire.”
― Goitsemang Mvula

“Perhaps disability was an integral part of life’s dance. Perhaps fragility was built into our very design. If the source of fragility was also the source of strength, then perhaps fragility was also strength.”
― Heather Lanier, Raising a Rare Girl: A Memoir

“People fear being someone else's hope.”
― Gabino Iglesias, The Devil Takes You Home

“there's something wrong with my ears

I can't shut them like I can shut my eyes”
― Henry Hoke, Open Throat

“If all you
Have is scissors, everything looks like

It’s hanging by a thread. Our days, these
Peonies are so brief & bound as fists.”
― Amy Woolard

“Those mornings were fragile things — like flowers blooming in the middle of a battlefield. She hadn’t realized then that the soil beneath them was already drowned in blood and bone, too rotten to let life truly take root.”
― Maggie Sn

“Why may writing letters be so intriguing, defying, or challenging? Why can it be so painful or stressful sometimes? Letters can become mirrors of our human condition, reflecting on fragility, resilience, vulnerability, hope, and the misunderstandings in our life experiences. ("Letter to unknown recipient “)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“And then he might say, "A man can hold two hearts in the same hand and not let them touch."

And if you asked him what that meant, he would just tell you he needed to get back to work.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“The slip was writhing.
I reached in to rescue it, even as the brown paper charred and the letters written on it turned to shadows. I thought I might hold it like an oak leaf, faded and winter-crisp, but when I wrapped my fingers around the word, it shattered.”
― Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words

“I watched it. For a thousand moments I watched it ride some unseen current of air. I expected it to land on the unswept floor, but it didn't. It glided like a bird, almost landing, then rose up to somersault as if bidden by a genie. I never imagined that it might land in my lap, that it could possibly travel so far. But it did.

The word sat in the folds of my dress like a bright thing fallen from heaven. ...

After a long while, I scooped the word up, careful not to crush its silvery wings, and brought it close to my face. It was difficult to read in the gloom of my hiding spot. I shuffled along to where a curtain of sparkling dust hung between two chairs.”
― Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words

“Seeing how scared the elephants were forced him to consider how fragile they were. Of course, I had always known this. Having a thick hide doesn't shield you from the terrible things the world has in store.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“Outside, it is so quiet.

It is the end of the last November,

and everything is turning so slowly

that time begins to run backward;

some words fail

in their attempt to breathe.

Things break easily

when time finally comes to a stop;

all the spaces in between,

inside this grey glass,
thawing thoughts distort —

the view grows faint at night.”
― Laura Chouette