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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Weakness

Amiable weakness.

Henry Fielding.

Weakness is born vanquished.

Mme. Swetchine.

The weakest goes to the wall.

Shakespeare.

To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering.

Milton.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness.

Tennyson.

Amiable weakness of human nature.

Gibbon.

Our worries always come from our weaknesses.

Joubert.

Fine by defect, and delicately weak.

Pope.

How many weak shoulders have craved heavy burdens!

Joubert.

Soft without weakness; without glaring, gay.

Pope.

But every one has a besetting sin to which he returns.

La Fontaine.

Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves in their weakness.

Mme. du Deffand.

Guard thy heart on this weak side, where most our nature fails.

Addison.

To think everything disputable is a proof of a weak mind and a captious temper.

Beattie.

The weakness of women has been given them to call forth the virtues of men.

Mme. Necker.

Many take pleasure in spreading abroad the weaknesses of an exalted character.

Steele.

Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.

La Rochefoucauld.

I know and love the good, yet, ah! the wrong pursue.

Petrarch.

We may not be weaklings because we have a strong enemy.

Latimer.

The attractiveness that exists to man in the very helplessness of woman is scarcely realized.

Lamartine.

We justly consider women to be weaker than ourselves, and yet we are governed by them.

Chamfort.

The weak-minded man is the slave of his vices and the dupe of his virtues.

J. Petit-Senn.

Some weak people are so sensible of their weakness as to be able to make a good use of it.

La Rochefoucauld.

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong, because of weakness.

Mrs. Browning.

Though it is weakness to love, oftentimes it is another weakness to cease to love.

Du Cœur.

Weakness is oftentimes so palpable as to be equivalent to wickedness.

George Sand.

The feeble howl with the wolves, bray with the asses, and bleat with the sheep.

Mme. Roland.

Woman’s weakness, not man’s merit, oftenest gains the suitor’s victory.

Chamfort.

Weakness indicates dependence, and there is a degree of trust and tenderness also in it.

Eugene Sue.

  • Soft-heartedness, in times like these,
  • Shows sof’ness in the upper story!
  • Lowell.

    But the concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

    Burke.

    We always weaken whatever we exaggerate.

    La Harpe.

    Weaknesses, so called, are nothing more nor less than vice in disguise!

    Lavater.

    Weakness is the only fault that is incorrigible.

    La Rochefoucauld.

    Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel that when we find one who is only weak, we are too happy.

    Voltaire.

    The weak may be joked out of anything but their weakness.

    Zimmermann.

    Delusion and weakness produce not one mischief the less, because they are universal.

    Burke.

    More men are guilty of treason through weakness than any studied design to betray.

    La Rochefoucauld.

    The mortal race is far too weak not to grow dizzy on unwonted heights.

    Goethe.

    There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.

    Lowell.

    We are not so easily guided by our most prominent weaknesses as by those of which we are least aware.

    Arthur Helps.

    The strength of man sinks in the hour of trial; but there doth live a Power that to the battle girdeth the weak.

    Joanna Baillie.

    There are some weaknesses that are peculiar and distinctive to generous characters, as freckles are to a fair skin.

    Bovee.

  • How sometimes nature will betray its folly,
  • Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime
  • To harder bosoms!
  • Shakespeare.

    Weakness ineffectually seeks to disguise itself,—like a drunken man trying to show how sober he is.

    Bovee.

    Some of our weaknesses are born in us, others are the result of education; it is a question which of the two gives us most trouble.

    Goethe.

    Weakness of conduct is but the consequence of weakness of conviction: for the strongest of all the springs of human action is human belief.

    Guizot.

    It is not because men’s desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak. There is no natural connection between strong impulses and a weak conscience.

    J. Stuart Mill.

    He that of greatest works is finisher oft does them by the weakest minister: so holy writ in babes hath judgment shown, when judges have been babes.

    Shakespeare.

    The more weakness the more falsehood; strength goes straight; every cannon-ball that has in it hollows and holes goes crooked. Weaklings must lie.

    Richter.

  • Ye gods, it doth amaze me,
  • A man of such a feeble temper should
  • So get the start of the majestic world,
  • And bear the palm alone.
  • Shakespeare.

    He who does most to cure woman of her weakness, her frivolity, and her servility will likewise at the same stroke do most to cure man of his brutality, his selfishness and his sensuality.

    Frances Power Cobbe.

  • Heaven forming each on other to depend,
  • A master, or a servant, or a friend,
  • Bids each on other for assistance call,
  • Till one man’s weakness grows the strength of all.
  • Pope.

  • If weakness may excuse,
  • What murderer, what traitor, parricide,
  • Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it?
  • All wickedness is weakness; that plea, therefore,
  • With God or man will gain thee no remission.
  • Milton.

    I have never quite understood the relationship between beauty and weakness, womanly sweetness and womanly silliness; to my mind, indeed, that woman being the most beautiful who is the most capable, while weakness and silliness can never by any chance be other than unlovely.

    E. Lynn Linton.

    Women, sometimes boasting of their weakness, cunningly obtain power by playing on the weakness of men. And they may well glory in their illicit sway; for, like Turkish bashaws, they have more real power than their masters.

    Mary Wollstonecraft.

    We must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it much. People that do not laugh or cry, or take more of anything than is good for them, or use anything but dictionary words, are admirable subjects for biographies.

    O. W. Holmes.

    Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage.

    Hazlitt.