Vulnerability Quotes

Those who have accepted the facts of my life often find me admirable for surviving, even thriving, in spite of it all. You might think I would find that comforting, but I never have. It creates, or emphasizes, the distance between us. They see triumph over past obstacles, whereas I experience the continuing vulnerability of walking a tightrope. There is no point of completion, no sigh of relief, no victory dance in the end zone. ~ Marla Handy

When I'm triggered, I think, "This will last forever" or "What if this lasts forever?" I get thoughts about how I should give up, run away, hide, protect myself. These thoughts, I cannot change. What I can change is how I respond to them. Will I unconditionally believe these ideas, or will I accept them as side effects of the temporary experience of pain? Will I act on each thought that arises in the burning fire, or will I hold myself gently and say, "It'll be okay. I know it hurts. I love you"? My power lies in these choices. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

In the midst of my vulnerability, I found my self-worth. ~ Penelope Ward

While there are many who would say that the race to the moon was hardly green, many others have noted that the photographs brought back from Apollo 8 created the environmental movement. "They fuelled an awareness of the vulnerability of the Earth which still resonates with us today and shapes our behaviour." It was Kennedy who started it all with his pledge: ~ John F. Kennedy

There's nothing more unattractive than a man who blames predestination for his own failures and a woman who blames men for her own vulnerability ...
Blame thyself ~ Sanhita Baruah

If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path. ~ Brene Brown

Courage uncovers strength, grace reveals beauty, vulnerability expresses humility, inner peace reflects contentment ~ Millen Livis

The test of any relationship lies in rewarding vulnerability instead of punishing it. ~ Gayle Peterson

I didn't join films to become a great star. I wanted a change from my mother's memory. I started believing in God after my mother's death because then there is heaven and hell and I might meet her there. I think of her as a star.She is a solid point of reference in my life. And I figure if I'm in films, if I'm 70mm, it is easier for her to see me. ~ Shah Rukh Khan

Place your truth on my hips. Don't tell me who you are. Show me with your sincerity, let me see the helplessness in your eyes, wrap your irreverence around me. I've been afraid. My freedom has been mistaken for frivolousness, my sexuality for carelessness. Double standards imposed with hypocritical fingers and incurious hearts. I've relinquished myself to the wrong ideologies. I'm tired of having to cover my vulnerability to protect others from feeling theirs.

Expose me, penetrate me with broad philosophies, let us collide recklessly with freedom. Steal my wild heart, but do not ask me to live under an umbrella when I like being soaked by the rain. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

It seems to me, then, that vulnerability and and self-disclosure are at the heart of what we understand about the nature of God. And the reason I believe gay and lesbian people are spiritual people is that we too have participated in vulnerability and self-disclosure, especially in the process of coming-out. When someone shares with you who they really, really are, it is a special offering. To do so when it risks rejection is a profound, holy gift. ~ Gene Robinson

Vulnerability does not take away your strength ~ Derek Hough

Create boundaries. Honor your limits. Say no. Take a break. Let go. Stay grounded. Nurture your body. Love your vulnerability. And if all else fails, breathe deeply. ~ Aletheia Luna

Women in troubled marriages frequently try to work out their problems through their children. Whether a woman does this through the extremes of overwhelming demands, severe rejection, or smothering control, the results are the same: the boy becomes too dependent on her. Without realizing it, in adulthood he transfers this dependency, as well as the conflicts and fears that go with it, onto the woman in his life. The misogynist saw his mother as having the power to frustrate him, to withhold love from him, to smother him, to make him feel weak, or to make insatiable demands on him - and he now views his partner as having those same powers. The father who doesn't provide his son with any alternative to his mother's influence leaves the boy alone with his fears and his panicky feelings of vulnerability and neediness. ~ Susan Forward

Anger is an assertion of rights and worth. It is communication, equality, and knowledge. It is intimacy, acceptance, fearlessness, embodiment, revolt, and reconciliation. Anger is memory and rage. It is rational thought and irrational pain. Anger is freedom, independence, expansiveness, and entitlement. It is justice, passion, clarity, and motivation. Anger is instrumental, thoughtful, complicated, and resolved. In anger, whether you like it or not, there is truth.

Anger is the demand of accountability. It is evaluation, judgment, and refutation. It is reflective, visionary, and participatory. It's a speech act, a social statement, an intention, and a purpose. It's a risk and a threat. A confirmation and a wish. It is both powerlessness and power, palliative and a provocation. In anger, you will find both ferocity and comfort, vulnerability and hurt. Anger is the expression of hope. ~ Soraya Chemaly

Real dishes break. That's how you know they're real. ~ Marty Rubin

Women's vulnerability around money is hardly exclusive to Africa. Throughout the world, women struggle with financial power. In the West, women's financial literacy is notably lower than men's. That lack of knowledge means that many women slide into poverty when they become widows. ~ Ann Cotton

Sometimes God seems to be killing us when He is actually saving us. ~ Jen Pollock Michel

Shame breeds fear. It crushes our tolerance for vulnerability, thereby killing engagement, innovation, creativity, productivity, and trust. ~ Brene Brown

It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of utter weakness and vulnerability. While ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

I think as feminists we have a way of looking at problems that other people appear not to understand. To name names, the right and the
left appear not to understand what it is that feminists are trying to do. Feminists are trying to destroy a sex hierarchy, a race hierarchy, an
economic hierarchy, in which women are hurt, are disempowered, and in which society celebrates cruelty over us and refuses us the integrity of our own bodies and the dignity of our own lives.

... So feminists look at the society we live in and try to understand how we are going to fight male power. And in order to try to figure out
how we're going to fight it, we have to figure out how it's organized, how it works. How does it survive? How does it work itself out? How
does it maintain itself as a system of power?

... So feminists come along, and we say: Well, we are going to understand how it is that these people do what they do. We are going to
approach the problem politically. That means that we are going to try to isolate and describe systems of exploitation as they work on us, from our point of view as the people who are being hurt by them. It means that even though we're on the bottom and they're on the top, we are examining them for points of vulnerability. And as we find those points of vulnerability - and you might locate them anatomically, as well as any other way - we are going to move whatever muscles we have, from whatever positions we are in, ~ Andrea Dworkin

Femininity and sweetness are part of women's strength...Quiet strength need not be mistaken for useless vulnerability. ~ Rozsika Parker

Because infinite players prepare themselves to be surprised by the future, they play in complete openness. It is not an openness as in candor, but an openness as in vulnerability. It is not a matter of exposing one's unchanging identity, the true self that has always been, but a way of exposing one's ceaseless growth, the dynamic self that has yet to be. ~ James P. Carse

Good pictures. Tragedy and violence certainly make powerful images. It is what we get paid for.But there is a price extracted with every such frame: some of the emotion, the vulnerability, the empathy that makes us human, is lost every time the shutter is released. ~ Greg Marinovich

Defense mechanisms protect us. Fortresses isolate us. And far too often we begin with the former and end up constructing the latter. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Vulnerability should be the thing that brings us closer than anything because we all share that. ~ Sharon Salzberg

It's the hard things that break; soft things don't break. It was an epiphany I had today and I just wonder why it took me so very, very long to see it! You can waste so many years of your life trying to become something hard in order not to break; but it's the soft things that can't break! The hard things are the ones that shatter into a million pieces! ~ C. JoyBell C.

All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person's (or thing's) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt. ~ Susan Sontag

I felt the vulnerability, the fragility of the children of the world, and how it was, nonetheless, on their frail shoulders that we loaded the weight of our weary hopes and eternal new beginnings. ~ Gabrielle Roy

Desperation, weakness, vulnerability - these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy. ~ Zadie Smith

Everyone has their folding-point, Miles. Their mortal vulnerability. Some just keep it in a nonstandard location. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

Who's a girl?"
"You're mine." His hands glided down her back, around and up to her breasts. "You're my girl."
"Sap," she said, but in a little sigh as she gave him her lips again.
She'd never been anybody's girl, had never wanted to be. It had always seemed a weak term to her, one of submission and vulnerability. But with him, it was sweet and foolish, and just exactly right. ~ J.D. Robb

He had tenderness in his heart - 'a soft place,' as Nicholas Higgins called it; but he had some pride in concealing it; he kept it very sacred and safe, and was jealous of every circumstance that tried to gain admission. But if he dreaded exposure of his tenderness, he was equally desirous that all men should recognize his justice; and he felt that he had been unjust, in giving so scornful a hearing to anyone who had waited, with humble patience, for five hours, to speak to him. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

You simply couldn't guard yourself against dreams. they attacked late at night when a person was at the most vulnerable. ~ Kate O'Riordan

We cannot know love if we remain unable to surrender our attachment to power, if any feeling of vulnerability strikes terror in our hearts. Lovelessness torments. ~ Bell Hooks

Exposing their own humility and vulnerability is one of the most difficult challenges for white antiracist, even after achieving an autonomous white racial identity. ~ Eileen O'Brien

We donot qualify as humans going by our acts, but we surely prove through our vulnerability and sufferings!" ~ Ramana Pemmaraju

I had forgotten how awful it was to be a woman alone
the leering glances, the catcalls, the offers of help which you dared not accept for fear of incurring a sexual debt. The awful sense of vulnerability. No wonder I had gone from man to man and always wound up married. How could I have left Bennett? How could I have forgotten? ~ Erica Jong

My people have a legend of the Dayslayer. It says that Artemis chose one of our own to be her personal guard. More beloved than any of her people, the Dayslayer has no known vulnerability. Once he's unleashed, his goal is destroy Dark-Hunters. (Spawn) So you're telling me he's the Bogeyman? (Zarek) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Not a mindless relinquishing of physical dignity in exchange for favors or pleasure, but an intentional vulnerability far more dangerous and lasting. ~ Grace Burrowes

I think that is funny to say because I've always loved her work and her strength and vulnerability, and the intensity of Evan's [Rachel Wood] performances. And to know her as a friend, know her as someone who we just have fun, whatever, and then see how present she is when she's working and how powerful she is. It was really awesome to get to sort of go into this different dimension with each other. ~ Ellen Page

The primary culprit is assumed to be peer rejection: shunning, exclusion, shaming, taunting, mocking, bullying. The conclusion reached by some experts is that peer acceptance is absolutely necessary for a child's emotional health and well-being, and that there is nothing worse than not being liked by peers. It is assumed that peer rejection is an automatic sentence to lifelong self-doubt. Many parents today live in fear of their children's not having friends, not being esteemed by their peers.

This way of thinking fails to consider two fundamental questions: What renders a child so vulnerable in the first place? And why is this vulnerability increasing? It is absolutely true that children snub, ignore, shun, shame, taunt, and mock. Children have always done these things when not sufficiently supervised by the adults in charge. But it is attachment, not the insensitive behavior or language of peers, that creates vulnerability. The current focus on the impact of peer rejection and peer acceptance has completely overlooked the role of attachment.

If the child is attached primarily to the parents, it is parental acceptance that is vital to emotional health and well-being, and not being liked by parents is the devastating blow to self-esteem. The capacity of children to be inhumane has probably not changed, but, as research shows, the wounding of our children by one another is increasing. If many kids are damaged these days by the insensitivity of their pee ~ Gabor Mate

We talk about the vulnerability involved in sharing our work publicly. I don't think we talk enough about the real vulnerability involved in making art; if we truly engage the process we are changed by it. ~ John Paul Caponigro

If you're married to an entrenched non-apologizer, it won't help to doggedly demand one. Some folks lack the self-esteem required to take responsibility for their less than honorable behaviors, feel remorse, and offer a heartfelt apology. And many people are so hard on themselves for the mistakes they make, they don't have the emotional room to admit vulnerability and apologize to a partner. ~ Harriet Lerner

the truly humble cannot be humbled. They are immune to humiliation. They have nothing to defend. There is no vulnerability and, therefore, the truly humble do not experience critical attacks by others. Instead, a truly humble person sees the critical verbalization by another person as merely a statement of the other person's inner problems. ~ David R. Hawkins

there is more strength
in admitting vulnerability
than in faking invincibility ~ Rick Julian

The author relates that Mickey Mantle did not expect to play one day and showed up extremely hung over. He was nevertheless called on to pitch and smashed a towering home run to an enthusiastic ovation. He related to his teammates, Those people don't know how tough that was. ~ Jim Bouton

A day or two after my love pronouncement, now feral with vulnerability, I sent you the passage from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes in which Barthes describes how the subject who utters the phrase "I love you" is like "the Argonaut renewing his ship during its voyage without changing its name." Just as the Argo's parts may be replaced over time but the boat is still called the Argo, whenever the lover utters the phrase "I love you," its meaning must be renewed by each use, as "the very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new. ~ Maggie Nelson

Technology represents intelligence systematically applied to the problem of the body. It functions to amplify and surpass the organic limits of the body; it compensates for the body's fragility and vulnerability ... ~ Shoshana Zuboff

Hollywood is run by men who are big on vulnerability. ~ Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio

Reclaiming ourselves usually means coming to recognize and accept that we have in us both sides of everything. We are capable of fear and courage, generosity and selfishness, vulnerability and strength. These things do not cancel each other out but offer us a full range of power and response to life. Life is as complex as we are. Sometimes our vulnerability is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity. It is not an either/or world. It is a real world. In calling ourselves "heads" or "tails," we may never own and spend our human currency, the pure gold of which our coin is made.

But judgment may heal over time. One of the blessings of growing older is the discovery that many of the things I once believed to be my shortcomings have turned out in the long run to be my strengths, and other things of which I was unduly proud have revealed themselves in the end to be among my shortcomings. Things that I have hidden from others for years turn out to be the anchor and enrichment of my middle age. What a blessing it is to outlive your self-judgments and harvest your failures. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

If we want to reclaim the essential part of our lives and reignite our passion and purpose, we have to learn how to own and engage with our vulnerability and how to feel the emotions that come with it. ~ Brene Brown

The irony is that what was supposed to be a great vulnerability of Hillary Clinton , which the Iraq war vote which she has acknowledged was a terrible mistake, has lent an aura of strength in a funny way. ~ Joe Conason

With Lillian, ironically, the Bowmans had reached their highest pinnacle in having married her to Marcus, Lord Westcliff. No one could have believed that the reserved and powerful earl would have wed a headstrong girl like Lillian. But Westcliff had seen beneath Lillian's brash façade to the vulnerability and fiercely loving heart she tried so hard to concede. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The definition of vulnerability is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. But vulnerability is not weakness; it's our most accurate measure of courage. When the barrier is our belief about vulnerability, the question becomes: 'Are we willing to show up and be seen when we can't control the outcome?' When the barrier to vulnerability is about safety, the question becomes: 'Are we willing to create courageous spaces so we can be fully seen? ~ Brene Brown

Dating is an act of outrageous vulnerability. You're leaving the comfort of your home and your friends to subject yourself to the scrutiny of strangers. You're sliding into that restaurant booth, plopping your laptop and gym bag on the floor, and saying, 'Hi, I'm Sara. Let's see if we can start a life together, shall we?'

It doesn't get more optimistic than that. ~ Sara Eckel

There's a side of me that dislikes feminism. I think we surrendered something and women were unable to reveal any kind of vulnerability. ~ Rachel Hunter

Humility was an offensive characteristic for a God, in the eyes of early non-Christians. How could Christians worship a God who deliberately chose to share in human birth with all its mess and vulnerability and limitation, as well as a shameful death? How can we now worship a God to whom all the unimportant little details of our lives actually matter? How can we respect a God who takes us more seriously than we take ourselves, and yet is not impressed with all our accomplishments? Who loves us equally well, whetherwe succeed or fail? How could it really be that God simply disregards not only our education, our tastes, our industry, our niceness, our worthiness in order to love us? God's greatness we can begin to approach. The sheer humility of God's love is incomprehensible. ~ Roberta C. Bondi

His vulnerability allowed me to let my guard down, and gently and methodically, he tore apart my well-constructed dam. Waves of tender feelings were lapping over the top and slipping through the cracks. The feelings flooded through and spilled into me. It was frightening opening myself up to feel love for someone again. My heart pounded hard and thudded audibly in my chest. I was sure he could hear it.
Ren's expression changed as he watched my face. His look of sadness was replaced by one of concern for me.
What was the next step? What should I do? What do I say? How do I share what I'm feeling?
I remembered watching romance movies with my mom, and our favorite saying was "shut up and kiss her already!" We'd both get frustrated when the hero or heroine wouldn't do what was so obvious to the two of us, and as soon as a tense, romantic moment occurred, we'd both repeat our mantra. I could hear my mom's humor-filled voice in my mind giving me the same advice: "Kells, shut up and kiss him already!"
So, I got a grip on myself, and before I changed my mind, I leaned over and kissed him.
He froze. He didn't kiss me back. He didn't push me away. He just stopped…moving. I pulled back, saw the shock on his face, and instantly regretted my boldness. I stood up and walked away, embarrassed. I wanted to put some distance between us as I frantically tried to rebuild the walls around my heart.
I heard him move. He slid his hand under my elbow and turned me arou ~ Colleen Houck

Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage. ~ Brene Brown

Cecelia, do you know why you're so special?" her mother had asked. Cecelia shook her head as her hair dried her tears. "You saw in him what few are able to see in another. You saw yourself within him. Each time you looked into his eyes, you saw your own happiness, love vulnerability, and pain. You're a rare child to be able to see so deeply inside the heart of love. ~ K.A. Reynolds

Trust is tough since it involves that quixotic mix of integrity, vulnerability, and intimacy. But trust anyway. ~ Jeffrey Fry

I found that the same softness which once made me a target now compelled people to trust me with their stories. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I do think there is an enhanced awareness of insecurity and vulnerability that induces anxiety that creates pressure on teachers and administrators to offer simplistic explanations and to be resistant to expressions of attitudes that can be viewed as unpatriotic, which is further interpreted as applicable to any tendency to challenge the government when it claims to be acting overseas to avoid repetitions of 9/11 or to encroach on domestic freedom to identify suspicious persons and behaviors. ~ Richard A. Falk

This witch's brew of vulnerability and fear and hope makes dawn the time when we can best hear whatever it is our ghosts are trying to tell us. But ~ Barbara Nickless

I think one's relationship with one's vulnerability is a very delicate and precious relationship. Most people try to hide, disguise that vulnerability, and in doing that, you, I think, diminish a great source of power. ~ Philip Schultz

The Unavailable Available Pattern." It's where you convince yourself (and others) that you are available for relationship, but you always find a way to stop short. That stopping short can manifest in many ways: choosing unavailable people, looking for excuses to run, focusing on a lover's imperfections rather than their appealing qualities, getting lost in the excitement of ecstatic possibility until the first glimpse of real vulnerability sends you packing. It's the addiction to possibility and the fear of intimacy all rolled into one. ~ Jeff Brown

To reignite creativity, innovation, and learning, leaders must rehumanize education and work. This means understanding how scarcity is affecting the way we lead and work, learning how to engage with vulnerability, and recognizing and combating shame. ~ Brene Brown

Just as legendary rivers were used to represent the flow of life, so Mount Athos is a handy image to show human vulnerability. Its minerals themselves reminding us that ours is a planet constituted around Nature's awesome violence! Struggling to survive then, is integral to our existence. Literature on these issues, transforming rock and boulder into a subjective mountain, where fleshly mountaineers set forth, in the blinding brilliance of an alpine dawn, to ascend their own transgressions, remains telling. Breathing in, when nearing the top, to smell the pure air of spiritual comprehension: of heady intrinsic freedom, only to descend, once more, into the obscure and the pedestrian; albeit existentially transformed! In this way, indeed, Mount Athos transfigures many a man. ~ David William Parry

Being a songwriter or a painter you're definitely facing your fears. You're facing your fears because you're speaking your truth; you're speaking from your heart. That's something that's not easy to do, you set yourself up for all sorts of criticism or vulnerability but that's why we do it. ~ Brett Dennen

What does open us is sharing our vulnerabilities. Sometimes we see a couple who has done this difficult work over a lifetime. In the process, they have grown old together. We can sense the enormous comfort, the shared quality of ease between these people. It is beautiful, and very rare. Without this quality of openness and vulnerability, partners don't really know each other; they are one image living with another image ... ~ Joko Beck

Pink reminds me of my love for dance. My youth. The innocence of being young. Tutus. Strawberry frosting on a vanilla cake (my favorite). And lipstick. I love lipstick. It also reminds me that I should take pride in my feminine traits, in being a woman. There is nothing remotely wrong with enjoying femininity. Curves. Hips. Lips. Empathy. Vulnerability. Sensuality. Patience. Intuition. ~ R.B. O'Brien

A love I was in no position to receive despite desperately needing it. No. Not I with my castaway, homeless body. Where would I store it? It would fall right through me, sink into the depths of my void. I would have needed so much love, more than any one person is capable of giving, to fill that gaping hole at the center of my life. And, besides his love had been capricious, inconsistent, flighty. ~ Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi

Knowing what I do now, I think about shame and worthiness in this way: 'It's the album, not the picture.' If you imagine opening up a photo album, and many of the pages are full eight-by-ten photos of shaming events, you'll close that album and walk away thinking, Shame defines that story. If, on the other hand, you open that album and see a few small photos of shame experiences, but each one is surrounded by pictures of worthiness, hope, struggle, resilience, courage, failure, success, and vulnerability, the shame experience are only a part of a larger story. They don't define the album. ~ Brene Brown

Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. ~ Brene Brown

Children may end up being the unexpected teachers of people many times their age, to whom they offer - through their exhaustive dependence, egoism, and vulnerability - an advanced education in a wholly new sort of love, one in which reciprocation is never jealously demanded or fractiously regretted and in which the true goal is nothing less than the transcendence of oneself for the sake of another. The ~ Alain De Botton

Just as some people may conceal their own sinfulness thus seeming better than the norm, others expose their own sinfulness thus seeming worse than the norm. ~ Criss Jami

Years ago I was asked this question: Do terrorists fear anything? I said, 'I suspect they would fear a morally strong America.' They would know that a morally strong America would not be dislodged. You can always appeal to a point of vulnerability which would break a people up. [Terrorists] don't fear so much the weaponry as the moral courage, and I think a morally strong America would be intimidating to them. ~ Ravi Zacharias

Her heart is no longer hers, it belongs to him, in all its brokenness and vulnerability. She prays that he protects it and doesn't finish the job, completely destroying it. ~ Karen-Anne Stewart

Writing is about vulnerability; to extract the gut-wrenching pain pent-up inside and exposing it through written words. ~ Dale Thele

If you lack vulnerability then you are not being truthful to yourself. ~ Benjamin Stone

Kaitlyn remebered the things he'd given her, the sun-flooded afternoons, and the cool healing ocean waves, and the music he'd written. He'd given her everything that was best in him, everything he was.
She wanted to give him the same thing back.
I don't know how you can love me. The words came soflty, as if he were thinking them to himself. You've seen what I am.
That's why I do love you, Kaitlyn told him. I hope you'll still love me when you see what I am.
"I know what you are, Kait. Everything beautiful and brave and gallant and..." He stopped as if his throat had closed. "Everything that makes me want to be better for you. That makes me sorry I'm such a stupid mess..."
You looked like a knight with that shard, Kaitlyn said, moving toward him.
"Really?" He laughed shakily.
My knight. And I never said thank you.
She was almost touching him, now. Looking up into his eyes. What she could feel in him was something she'd only felt before when she gave him her life energy. Childlike, marveling joy. Trust and vulnerability. And such love...
Then she was in his arms and they weren't separate beings any longer. Their minds were together, sharing thoughts, sharing happiness beyond thought. Sharing everything.
She never even knew whether he kissed her. ~ L.J. Smith

Eviction reveals people's vulnerability and desperation, as well as their ingenuity and guts. ~ Matthew Desmond

We are all vulnerable but do not fear this, just revel in the chance to experience that & know & grow beyond. ~ Jay Woodman

I could experience vulnerability if I just constantly gave myself away without ever taking time out once a day or a couple times a day or whatever it is I need to restore, whether it's more sleep, or whether it's going to see a movie or writing something new. ~ Jason Mraz

Counterproductive Types of Care and Caution

The same careful and cautious tendencies that can be helpful in some situations can become paralyzing in others. You might hold back from opportunities or get caught up in minutia while leaving bigger issues unattended. Very cautious tendencies can also cause people to hold back from attempting to form relationships - whether they be friendships or romantic, business, or collegial relationships. There's always some level of vulnerability that comes along with developing any type of close relationship. Therefore, in some cases, anxiety-based instincts to be self-protective can leave people feeling isolated and alone. Anxious people will sometimes avoid feeling vulnerable at all costs, even if it means feeling lonely or their isolation from peers thwarts their career success. ~ Alice Boyes

The tree that stands so firm on land trembles in the water. ~ Marty Rubin

The more I try to impress people, the more I separate myself from them. Vulnerability attracts love. ~ Donald Miller

Actions talk. Words are worthless. You think to discover in me a vein of vulnerability, a marbling of sensitivity glimpsed only by you because you're special, so you can proclaim, "Look, Barrons' torturous past has made him a monster but only because he's suffered so much. It's understandable that he lives by no law but his own - a violent, bloody, conscienceless law - but the healing power of my love will restore his demolished humanity!"
Restore means to return a thing that was taken. Mine was not. ~ Karen Marie Moning

It's not that we want others to fail, but we need to know that our own sorrows have echoes in others people's lives. That's what connects us. Strength may be impressive, but it's vulnerability that builds friendships. ~ Jessica Pan

Doesn't that throw an interesting light on the New Testament? The story begins with a pregnant woman riding a donkey toward Bethlehem. The very picture of vulnerability. Troubled times, dangerous roads - but the woman is in no hurry. She knows things that the reader doesn't. She knows that there are still seven hundred pages to go before the Apocalypse. ~ Nicolas Dickner

The thing I really love about my fans is the vulnerability and openness, the crying and the hugs. They are so kind. ~ Mary Lambert

I want love without drama, romance without pain. I want intimacy without vulnerability. I want a guarantee. I want something that doesnt exist. Maybe we all do. Maybe we're all chasing unicorns. ~ Josh James Riebock

There's vulnerability - so I have to make sure the audience is certain that I know what I'm doing. There's vulnerability there because my heart is open, but at the same time I definitely have a lot of "weapons" at my disposal. I have all the language, I have all of the moment - I have all of that to spar with somebody, to take anything on. ~ Margaret Cho

The journey of reinvention is one of raw emotions
Emerging from dormancy
Surprising as a paper cut
Overwhelming as a hailstorm
One part vulnerability
One part rage
One part surrender
Uncomfortable
Unfamiliar
Unsure
Fearful
Alone
Damaged
Broken
And finding a new Self
Slowly
Different
Healing
Humble
Present
Open
Longing
Free ~ Dave Rudbarg

That though passageway came with a surprising revelation. When life forces you to face yourself, what awaits in the mirror is a gift: vulnerability. Your heart is pierced. You're broken open. You're hyper-aware of what you're feeling. ~ Alicia Keys

When dreams are turned away, death becomes the ultimate salvation ... .There are only two extremes in human madness: the instant when you become aware of your own impotence and the instant when you become aware of the vulnerability of others. It's a question of accepting one's madness ... or suffering it. ~ Yasmina Khadra

When God calls us to confession, it's not just about sharing details for the purpose of information transference. To better understand what God has called us to, it is important to know the difference between transparency and vulnerability. Transparency is sharing the intimate details of your life with another. Vulnerability is going beyond transparency to invite others into the details of your life and asking them to help you. ~ Aaron Stern

I'm pleased-very pleased-that you've finally made your choice. It's about time you came to your senses."
He arched a brow. "Even if it took a kidnapping to do it?"
She nodded sagely. "Even so." She paused, then more gently asked, "She's the right one for you, isn't she?"
He held her gaze, then nodded. "Yes. Definitely." He hesitated, then added, "I couldn't live without her."
Caro's smile widened until she was beaming. "Wonderful. That's how it should be."
He wasn't so sure he needed to hear that; the sense of vulnerability and dependency took some getting used to; he wasn't yet sure he'd mastered the knack. "Sadly, it seems that whenever I get close to a prospective wedding, I end up wounded. With you and Michael, I got shot and nearly died. This time, with me and Heather, I got gored and nearly died. I suppose I should be happy that Constance and Cordelia are already married."
Caro laughed. "You probably escaped them because they're so much older that you-you were only a lad when they wed." She paused, head tilting as she studied him. Still smiling, she went on, "You're a protector, you know. That's what you are-that's what you do. And now you've found the lady you're supposed to protect for the rest of your life." Her smile deepened. "Once you marry her, you'll be safe."
He humphed, but continued to smile, and didn't attempt to argue.
Because she was right.
Heather was the lady he would protect for the rest of his life. ~ Stephanie Laurens

Vulnerability is strength, surrender is victory. ~ Sean O'Donoghue Morgan