Tenderhearted Quotes

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Be tough minded but tenderhearted.
H. Jackson Brown Jr. (Life's Little Instruction Book: 511 Suggestions, Observations, and Reminders on How to Live a Happy and Rewarding Life)
What an impossible and miraculous and hideous thing this was. An ugly plan hatched by an ugly boy now dreamt into ugly life. From dream to reality. How appropiate it was that Ronan, left to his own devices, manifested beautiful cars and beautiful birds and tenderhearted brothers, while Adam, when given the power, manifested a filthy string of perverse murders.
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
I don’t understand how I could have believed you were a warm, affectionate, and tenderhearted person! You’re obviously as prickly as a porcupine and any man who comes close to you will end up with a face full of quills!
Colleen Houck
This one is for the softies. The tenderhearted sweeties. The introverts who are afraid to shine.
Sarah Adams (Practice Makes Perfect (When in Rome, #2))
My more tenderhearted daughter, Becka, said to me during this time, “Mom, when you write a novel you get to rewrite it, but when you live with someone for twenty years, that is the novel, and you can never write that novel with anyone again!
Elizabeth Strout (My Name Is Lucy Barton (Amgash #1))
Although I could never get used to the constant state of anxiety in which the guilty, the great, and the tenderhearted live, I felt I was doing my best in the way of mimicry.
Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
My sister is no fool and she is not tender-hearted,” I said. “My sister fights for her home, and takes what risks she must. That is why I put myself before her today—why I would not let you have her. My sister burns, and she does not burn for you.
E.K. Johnston (A Thousand Nights (A Thousand Nights, #1))
As delicate as flower, as tender as rose petals, choosing to be tender and kind in a harsh environment is not weakness, it's courage.
Luffina Lourduraj
Magnus invented your Portals, not that he receives any credit for it from Shadowhunters. He is one of the most powerful warlocks in the world, and so tenderhearted he rushes to the aid of vicious killers. He is the best the Downworld has to offer.
Cassandra Clare (Son of the Dawn (Ghosts of the Shadow Market, #1))
The Harold Herald, alive with news of the war, even printed an extra edition the next day, and among the news of the front page, the girls discovered that Minister Fairweller had been wounded. Clover, so tenderhearted, cried. "Oh,he's probably all right," said Bramble. "It would take a lot to kill him. Like garlic and a stake through the heart." Clover still cried. That was Clover for you.
Heather Dixon Wallwork (Entwined)
There is no such thing as tough love. Love is kind, love is compassionate, love is tender.
Heather Wolf (Kipnuk the Talking Dog)
Tenderhearted people are silent sufferers they just learn the art to fly with broken wings.
Abhysheq Shukla (Feelings Undefined: The Charm of the Unsaid Vol. 1)
A period of darkness is essential in order to expand personal awareness. Experiencing sadness and loss makes a person appreciative of life, more tenderhearted, and open to living life as an ecstatic journey of discovery.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
We wait too long to tell the people we love that they are the very reason that we exist. We assume that our wife, child, other family members, and friends understand our love and affection. We assume that people we care about understand our enigmatic idiosyncrasies and willingly accept the shrouded reasons behind our demonstrable oddities. We assume that other people sense that we struggle valiantly in our blackened landscape. We presume that other people comprehend our struggle to glean meaning amongst the ashes spewed from the absurd circumstances that we operate. Sometimes we need to stop and tell the tenderhearted persons whom we care about that we love them and explain that our awkward strangeness is not a rejection of them.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
It's fun to do the impossible" Walt Disney I always dream BIG!
Steve William Laible
It was a small act of pettiness, but by gentle, tenderhearted Martha’s standards, it was a declaration of all-out war, and Morrigan adored her for it.
Jessica Townsend (Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow (Nevermoor, #2))
It was a long time since he'd done any actual clinical work, and obviously his sojourn among the academics at Saro University had attenuated the professional detachment that allows members of the healing arts to confront the ill without being overwhelmed by compassion and sorrow. He was surprised at that, how tenderhearted he seemed to have become, how thin-skinned.
Isaac Asimov (Nightfall)
It’s best to keep America just like that, always in the background, a sort of picture post card which you look at in a weak moment. Like that, you imagine it’s always there waiting for you, unchanged, unspoiled, a big patriotic open space with cows and sheep and tenderhearted men ready to bugger everything in sight, man, woman or beast. It doesn’t exist, America. It’s a name you give to an abstract idea…
Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer (Tropic, #1))
There is violence in this supposedly tender heart of mine.
Julian Barnes (Talking It Over)
Age has given me the gift of me, it just gave me what I was always longing for, which was to get to be the woman I've already dreamt of being. Which is somebody who can do rest and do hard work and be a really constant companion, a constant tender-hearted wife to myself.
Anne Lamott
Suddenly she was standing at Tara again with the world about her ears, desolate with the knowledge that she could not face life without the terrible strength of the weak, the gentle, the tender-hearted.
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
Disliking humanity in general, she was one of those excessively tender-hearted people who are greatly moved by the troubles of complete strangers, in which she sometimes imagined herself playing a noble part.
Barbara Pym (Jane and Prudence)
You have to recognize your inability to love before you can love the way God loves. His version of love is unfamiliar to the natural world; It is sacrificial and selfless and the most beautiful love you could experience.
Shannon L. Alder
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
Anonymous
so tenderhearted, so sensitive to life—his same receptors that were open to beauty were as open to suffering.
Chloé Cooper Jones (Easy Beauty)
If it comes to killing, tell Ser Jacelyn I won’t have it done in front of Tommen.” Tyrion donned a heavy cloak of dark brown wool. “My nephew is tender-hearted.” “Are you certain he’s a Lannister?
George R.R. Martin (A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2))
When we are fearful and worried all the time, we are living as if we don’t believe that we have a strong and able Shepherd who is tenderhearted toward us, who only leads us to good places, who protects us and lovingly watches over us.
Joseph Prince (The Power of Right Believing: 7 Keys to Freedom from Fear, Guilt, and Addiction)
The book she held had collapsed against her chest, planted like a shield between her tender heart and all that discouraged and despaired.
Millie Florence (Lydia Green Of Mulberry Glen)
Always as lovely as any woman in any magazine, as any TV star of whom millions were enamored, she had lately looked thin and drawn. Even the evident weariness and the crescents of darkness like fading bruises around her eyes did not detract from her appearance. In fact, they suggested that she was tenderhearted and haunted by some terrible loss, that her pain, like the pain endured by a martyr, was beautiful, which then made her face yet more beautiful than it had been before.
Dean Koontz (Innocence)
But this flower was good-natured, always tenderhearted and compassionate. That’s why it met with trouble after trouble. It seemed to bring all this trouble on itself, but it also anticipated and accepted the consequences of such tenderness. If others thought that softness was a weakness, then it was they who were truly blind.
Meng Xi Shi (Thousand Autumns: Qian Qiu (Novel) Vol. 1)
I've been living like this for a long time - about twenty years. I'm forty now. I used to be in the civil service; I no longer am. I was a wicked official. I was rude, and took pleasure in it. After all, I didn't accept bribes, so I had to reward myself at least with that. (A bad witticism, but I won't cross it out. I wrote it thinking it would come out very witty; but now, seeing for myself that I simply had a vile wish to swagger - I purposely won't cross it out!) When petitioners would come for information to the desk where I sat - I'd gnash my teeth at them, and felt an inexhaustible delight when I managed to upset someone. I almost always managed. They were timid people for the most part: petitioners, you know. But among the fops there was one officer I especially could not stand. He simply refused to submit and kept rattling his sabre disgustingly. I was at war with him over that sabre for a year and a half. In the end, I prevailed. He stopped rattling. However, that was still in my youth. But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it. I’m foaming at the mouth, but bring me some little doll, give me some tea with a bit of suger, and maybe I’ll calm down. I’ll even wax tenderhearted, though afterwards I’ll certainly gnash my teeth at myself and suffer from insomnia for a few months out of shame. Such is my custom. And I lied about myself just now when I said I was a wicked official. I lied out of wickedness. I was simply playing around both with the petitioners and with the officer, but as a matter of fact I was never able to become wicked.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)
(about William Blake) [Blake] said most of us mix up God and Satan. He said that what most people think is God is merely prudence, and the restrainer and inhibitor of energy, which results in fear and passivity and "imaginative death." And what we so often call "reason" and think is so fine, is not intelligence or understanding at all, but just this: it is arguing from our *memory* and the sensations of our body and from the warnings of other people, that if we do such and such a thing we will be uncomfortable. "It won't pay." "People will think it is silly." "No one else does it." "It is immoral." But the only way you can grow in understanding and discover whether a thing is good or bad, Blake says, is to do it. "Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." For this "Reason" as Blake calls it (which is really just caution) continually nips and punctures and shrivels the imagination and the ardor and the freedom and the passionate enthusiasm welling up in us. It is Satan, Blake said. It is the only enemy of God. "For nothing is pleasing to God except the invention of beautiful and exalted things." And when a prominent citizen of his time, a logical, opining, erudite, measured, rationalistic, Know-it-all, warned people against "mere enthusiasm," Blake wrote furiously (he was a tender-hearted, violent and fierce red-haired man): "Mere enthusiasm is the All in All!
Brenda Ueland (If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit)
I rather miss my wild girl; but if I get a strong, helpful, tender-hearted woman in her place, I shall feel quite satisfied.
Louisa May Alcott
She was just like every other woman. Eager and tender-hearted. That knot of grief in her chest begging to be undone.
Sophie Mackintosh (The Water Cure)
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
Stephen King (If It Bleeds)
How appropriate it was that Ronan, left to his own devices, manifested beautiful cars and beautiful birds and tender-hearted brothers.
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
Zeiset (The Holy Bible: King James Version)
hBe kind to one another, tenderhearted,  iforgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Anonymous (The Holy Bible: English Standard Version)
June Riva, that once tenderhearted dreamer, was gone.
Taylor Jenkins Reid (Malibu Rising)
And there's another thing, too—it don't hurt when you chip me about it. Thick-skinned and tenderhearted, that's my mixture.
James Hilton
More and more, it seems to me that compassion dwells in the tough, not the tender-hearted, because it requires us to come to terms with our own capacity (or incapacity) for suffering, and it calls for action rather than sentiment. It also requires us to get past the guilt and resentment we feel when we come face to face with someone whose suffering is greater than our own.
Ann Nietzke
I have heard a mantra lately that rings hollow in my ears: “There can be no reconciliation without justice.” When I hear that, I want to scream, “YES! AND THE DEATH OF CHRIST IS THAT JUSTICE!” All other justice is proximate and insufficient. It is because of Christ’s work on the cross that that we can heed the apostle’s admonition: “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:31–32). Who am I to tell a white brother that he cannot be reconciled to me until he has drudged up all of the racial sins of his and his ancestors’ past and made proper restitution? Christ has atoned for sin!
Voddie T. Baucham Jr. (Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe)
You saved me because you could not bear the thought of leaving me behind.” He touched my face, very gently. “Not from a sense of right and wrong, but because you are just that tenderhearted.
Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Collection: Books 6-10 (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #6-10))
It takes a lot more Strength to be Kind, than to be hard hearted in a Hard World. To be Kind is to be Gracious and Tenderhearted. There are things that we cannot fix---but we can be Tenderhearted.
Keith Moore
A man without ever the least appearance of anger, or any other passion; able at the same time most exactly to observe the Stoic Apathia, or unpassionateness, and yet to be most tender-hearted: ever of good credit; and yet almost without any noise, or rumour: very learned, and yet making little show.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
Do not be afraid to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal any unforgiveness or bitterness. The longer you hide it, the stronger it will become and the harder your heart will grow. Stay tenderhearted. How? Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. —EPHESIANS 4:31-32
John Bevere (The Bait of Satan: Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense)
Keep thyself therefore, truly simple, good, sincere, grave, free from all ostentation, a lover of that which is just, religious, kind, tender-hearted, strong and vigorous to undergo anything that becomes thee.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
So here is what I see when we reclaim the church ladies: a woman loved and free is beautiful. She is laughing with her sisters, and together they are telling their stories, revealing their scars and their wounds, the places where they don't have it figured out. They are nurturers, creating a haven where the young, the broken, the tenderhearted, and the at-risk can flourish. These women are dancing and worshiping, hands high, faces tipped toward heaven, tears streaming. They are celebrating all shapes and sizes, talking frankly and respectfully about sexuality and body image, promising to stop calling themselves fat. They are saving babies tossed in rubbish heaps, rescuing child soldiers, supporting mamas trying to make ends meet halfway around the world, thinking of justice when they buy their daily coffee. They are fighting sex trafficking. They are pastoring and counseling. They are choosing life consistently, building hope, doing the hard work of transformation in themselves. They are shaking off the silence of shame and throwing open the prison doors of physical and sexual abuse, addictions, eating disorders, and suicidal depression. Poverty and despair are being unlocked - these women know there are many hands helping turn that key. There isn't much complaining about husbands and chores, cattiness, or jealousy when a woman knows she is loved for her true self. She is lit up with something bigger than what the world offers, refusing to be intimidated into silence or despair.
Sarah Bessey (Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women)
We refuse to keep account of or make mention of past offenses. They are history and they are forgiven (Ephesians 4:31-32 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: 32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you; Isaiah 43:25 I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins).
Tina Campbell (I Need A Day to Pray)
Very likely some Mrs. Grundy will observe, "I don't believe it, boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats, and women must not expect miracles." I dare say you don't, Mrs. Grundy, but it's true nevertheless. Women work a good many miracles, and I have a persuasion that they may perform even that of raising the standard of manhood by refusing to echo such sayings. Let the boys be boys, the longer the better, and let the young men sow their wild oats if they must. But mothers, sisters, and friends may help to make the crop a small one, and keep many tares from spoiling the harvest, by believing, and showing that they believe, in the possibility of loyalty to the virtues which make men manliest in good women's eyes. If it is a feminine delusion, leave us to enjoy it while we may, for without it half the beauty and the romance of life is lost, and sorrowful forebodings would embitter all our hopes of the brave, tenderhearted little lads, who still love their mothers better than themselves and are not ashamed to own it. Laurie
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Little Women #1))
Parallel to tenderness and cruelty, the cataracts of pleasure and pain are interrelated. Painful and pleasurable sensations instruct us of our physical boundaries. The collective scorecard of physical pain and pleasurable sensations define the evolving self. Our internal clockworks comprised of remembrances of times past, both painful and pleasurable, provide each of us with a telling emotional autobiography. What we primarily recall – pain or pleasure – is revelatory. How we act with kindness and tenderheartedly, or hardheartedly and cruelly is equally telling.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
But underneath that crusty attitude and gruff grimace was a tender-hearted man who had made it his business to take Mike and me under his wing. And he'd taught us more about what a godly man was than any sermon could have. He hadn't wasted his life. He'd spent a good amount of it on us.
Susie Finkbeiner (All Manner of Things)
He who is inclined to lust is merciful and tender-hearted; those who are inclined to purity are not so' (Saint John Climacus). It took a saint, neither more nor less, to denounce so distinctly and so vigorously not the lies but the very essence of Christian morality, and indeed of all morality.
Emil M. Cioran (The Trouble With Being Born)
Sophie did not care to think how Howl might react if Fanny woke him by stabbing him with her parasol. “No, no!” she said. “Howl has been very kind to me.” And this was true, Sophie realized. Howl showed his kindness rather strangely, but, considering all Sophie had done to annoy him, he had been very good to her indeed.
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. —Ephesians 4:32
Alex Kendrick (The Love Dare)
fourth chapter of Ephesians: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
Stephen King (If It Bleeds)
The young fool might have known his prayers were doomed to fail. Achilles was not kind or tender-hearted, but a man of fierce passions
Homer (The Iliad)
If we hug, we have tender heart towards each other.
Lailah Gifty Akita
Tenderness is false mercy. It’s easy, emotion without reason. Mercy takes strength, courage, love. Tender-hearted folks will never be there for you when the dark is darkest.
Dean Koontz (Kaleidoscope (Nameless: Season Two #3))
The winds are strong and it will make a tender flower like you fall, Let me hold your tenderness for a moment, Forgetting all pains that the tenderness has caused....
Luffina Lourduraj
Leaders need to be simmered for a long time before they become tender-hearted, wise, and self-sacrificing, So be patient and consistent.
Sébastien Richard (Lead Like a Superhero: What Pop Culture Icons Can Teach Us About Impactful Leadership)
Your gracefulness and feminine charms always so tender, you make my heart smile and wonder!
Avijeet Das
Mrs. Stelling was not a loving, tender-hearted woman; she was a woman whose skirt sat well, who adjusted her waist and patted her curls with a preoccupied air when she inquired after your welfare.
George Eliot (Complete Works of George Eliot)
An honest, poor, but otherwise unremarkable man and his loving, tender-hearted wife, though long forgotten and lost to history, may have been the ancestors who are most worthy of our admiration today.
Laurence Overmire (Digging for Ancestral Gold: The Fun and Easy Way to Get Started on Your Genealogy Quest)
In the possibility of a loyalty to the virtues which makes men manliest in good women's eyes. If it is a feminine delusion, leave us to enjoy it while we may, for without it half the beauty and the romance of life is lost, and sorrowful forebodings would embitter all our hopes of the brave, tenderhearted little lads, who still love their mothers better than themselves and are not ashamed to own it.
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)
There are strange red depths in the soul of the most commonplace man. I am tenderhearted by nature, and have found my eyes moist many a time over the scream of a wounded hare. Yet the blood lust was on me now. I found myself on my feet emptying one magazine, then the other, clicking open the breech to re-load, snapping it to again, while cheering and yelling with pure ferocity and joy of slaughter as I did so.
Arthur Conan Doyle (The Lost World (English Library))
Girls become fragmented, their selves split into mysterious contradictions. They are sensitive and tenderhearted, mean and competitive, superficial and idealistic. They are confident in the morning and overwhelmed with anxiety by nightfall. They rush through their days with wild energy and then collapse into lethargy. They try on new roles every week--this week the good student, next week the delinquent and the next, the artist.
Mary Pipher (Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls)
The greatness of our God lies in the fact that he is both tough minded and tenderhearted. He has qualities both of austerity and gentleness. The Bible, always clear in stressing both attributes of God, expresses his tough mindedness in his justice and wrath and his tenderheartedness in his love and grace. God has two outstretched arms. One is strong enough to surround us with justice and one is gentle enough to embrace us with grace.
Martin Luther King Jr. (Strength to Love)
The greatness of our God lies in the fact that he is both toughminded and tenderhearted. He has qualities both of austerity and of gentleness. The Bible, always clear in stressing both attributes of God, expresses his toughmindedness in his justice and wrath and his tenderheartedness in his love and grace. God has two outstretched arms. One is strong enough to surround us with justice, and one is gentle enough to embrace us with grace.
Martin Luther King Jr. (Strength to Love)
Has it never occurred to you that that miserable clown may have a soul–a living, struggling human soul, tied down into that crooked hulk of a body and forced to slave for it? You that are so tender-hearted to everything–you that pity the body in its fool’s dress and bells–have you never thought of the wretched soul that has not even motley to cover its horrible nakedness? Think of it shivering with cold, stilled with shame and misery, before all those people–feeling their jeers that cut like a whip–their laughter, that burns like red-hot iron on the bare flesh! Think of it looking round–so helpless before them all–for the mountains that will not fall on it–for the rocks that have not the heart to cover it–envying the rats that can creep into some hole in the earth and hide; and remember that a soul is dumb–it has no voice to cry out–it must endure, and endure, and endure.
Ethel Lilian Voynich (خرمگس)
Even their mother missed them—and how much more their tender-hearted cousin, who wandered about the house, and thought of them, and felt for them, with a degree of affectionate regret which they had never done much to deserve!
Jane Austen (Mansfield Park)
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give  cgrace to those who hear. 30And  ddo not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,  eby whom you were sealed for the day of  fredemption. 31 gLet all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 hBe kind to one another, tenderhearted,  iforgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Anonymous (The Holy Bible: English Standard Version)
Vulnerability means fearlessly keeping the door to your heart open. A tender heart that does not try to protect itself and remains open to experience, accepting, loving, and forgiving under all circumstances, is an unbreakable heart.
Shai Tubali (Unlocking the 7 Secret Powers of the Heart: A Practical Guide to Living in Trust and Love)
Girls know they are losing themselves... Girls become fragmented, their selves split into mysterious contradictions. They are sensitive and tenderhearted, mean and competitive, superficial and idealistic. They are confident in the morning and overwhelmed with anxiety by nightfall. They rush through their days with wild energy and then collapse into lethargy,. They try on new roles every week: this week the good student, next week the delinquent and the next, the artist.
Mary Pipher (Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls)
Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness
Frederick Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass)
Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.
Frederick Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass)
tender. Laurie was growing more serious, strong, and firm, and both were learning that beauty, youth, good fortune, even love itself, cannot keep care and pain, loss and sorrow, from the most blessed for ... Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and sad and dreary. "She is growing better, I am sure of it, my dear. Don't despond, but hope and keep happy," said Mrs. March, as tenderhearted Daisy stooped from her knee to lay her rosy cheek against her little cousin's pale one.
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Illustrated))
Geoffrey Chaucer’s tender-hearted prioress, Madame Eglantyne, who was said to weep at the sight of a mouse caught in a trap, would nevertheless have had a gallows on her property, upon which, at the hands of her bailiff, she would have hanged thieves.
Catharine Arnold (Underworld London: Crime and Punishment in the Capital City)
Donald Trump is fond of reciting a poem about a foolish but tenderhearted woman who goes for a walk one winter’s day and comes across a half-frozen snake. She kindly brings the reptile into her home, lays it beside the fire, feeds it milk and honey, and restores it to health. Pleased to see the snake doing well, she picks it up and is bitten on the chest. Dying, she asks her patient why he has been ungrateful, and is told, “Shut up, silly woman, you knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.
Madeleine K. Albright (Fascism: A Warning)
For it may happen if thou dost not take heed. Keep thyself therefore, truly simple, good, sincere, grave, free from all ostentation, a lover of that which is just, religious, kind, tender-hearted, strong and vigorous to undergo anything that becomes thee.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
She was passionately loyal, and if she was obnoxious it was only because she was so deeply tender-hearted. It made her easily wounded, and when she was wounded she lashed out. She tortured everybody around her, but only because she was more tortured than anyone.
Lev Grossman (The Magicians (The Magicians #1))
Such were the shepherds of Judea! In appearance, rough and savage as the gaunt dogs with them around the blaze; in fact, simple-minded, tender-hearted; effects in due, in part, to the primitive life they led, but chiefly to their constant care of things lovable and helpless.
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
I wish I had more time,” Grandpa says finally, the words a whisper. “Seventy years sounds like forever when you’re young, doesn’t it? But it’s not. It’s just a blink. Really no time at all.” He pauses. “But I can’t think of any better way to spend the last of it than with you.
McCaid Paul (Sweet Tea & Snap Peas)
During the first year Patty lived with the Murrays, they found her to be industrious, docile, and faithful—and yet she was not happy and had not found with them all she expected. They were kind to her, providing plenty of food and not too much work. They clothed her comfortably, let her go to church, and did not scold her very often. But no one showed that they loved her, no one praised her efforts, no one seemed to think that she had any hope or wish beyond her daily work; and no one saw in the shy, quiet little maiden a lonely, tenderhearted girl longing for a crumb of the love so freely given to the children of the home.
Louisa May Alcott (A Merry Christmas: And Other Christmas Stories)
Another much-discussed question is, whether women are intended by nature to be subject to men.“No,” said a very gallant philosopher to me the other day; “nature never dictated any such law.The dominion which we exercise over them is tyrannical; they yield themselves to men only because they are more tender-hearted, and consequently more human and more rational.These advantages, which, had we been reasonable, would, without doubt, have been the cause of their subordination, because we are irrational. “Now, if it is true that it is a tyrannical power which we have over women, it is none the less true that they exercise over us a natural dominion- that of beauty, which nothing can resist.Our power does not extend to all countries, but that of beauty is universal.Why, then, should we have any privilege?Is it because we are stronger than they?But that would be the height of injustice.We use every possible means to discourage them.Our powers would be found equal if we were educated alike.Try women in those gifts which education has not weakened, and we soon will see which is the abler sex.
Montesquieu (Persian Letters (Penguin Classics))
Ralph Waldo Emerson would later observe that “Souls are not saved in bundles.”16 Johnson fervently believed in each individual’s mysterious complexity and inherent dignity. He was, through it all, a moralist, in the best sense of that term. He believed that most problems are moral problems. “The happiness of society depends on virtue,” he would write. For him, like other humanists of that age, the essential human act is the act of making strenuous moral decisions. He, like other humanists, believed that literature could be a serious force for moral improvement. Literature gives not only new information but new experiences. It can broaden the range of awareness and be an occasion for evaluation. Literature can also instruct through pleasure. Today many writers see literature and art only in aesthetic terms, but Johnson saw them as moral enterprises. He hoped to be counted among those writers who give “ardor to virtue and confidence to truth.” He added, “It is always a writer’s duty to make the world better.” As Fussell puts it, “Johnson, then, conceives of writing as something very like a Christian sacrament, defined in the Anglican catechism as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given to us.’ ” Johnson lived in a world of hack writers, but Johnson did not allow himself to write badly—even though he wrote quickly and for money. Instead, he pursued the ideal of absolute literary honesty. “The first step to greatness is to be honest” was one of Johnson’s maxims. He had a low but sympathetic view of human nature. It was said in Greek times that Demosthenes was not a great orator despite his stammer; he was a great orator because he stammered. The deficiency became an incentive to perfect the associated skill. The hero becomes strongest at his weakest point. Johnson was a great moralist because of his deficiencies. He came to understand that he would never defeat them. He came to understand that his story would not be the sort of virtue-conquers-vice story people like to tell. It would be, at best, a virtue-learns-to-live-with-vice story. He wrote that he did not seek cures for his failings, but palliatives. This awareness of permanent struggle made him sympathetic to others’ failings. He was a moralist, but a tenderhearted one.
David Brooks (The Road to Character)
Jesus personally responds to our fuming and sadness. Feisty Martha got to see Jesus get angry at death. Tenderhearted Mary got to see him cry. Two unique women witnessed two unique responses from their Lord and Friend. Jesus, who is the fullness of the image of God, not only sympathized with them, he did so according to their uniqueness. Jesus arched his back toward the bully for Martha’s sake. Then he shed tears for Mary’s sake. Perhaps Nicholas Wolterstorff was thinking of Jesus’ tears when he wrote this reflection in response to the premature death of his son: We strain to hear [God in our sorrows]. But instead of hearing an answer we catch the sight of God himself scraped and torn. Through our tears we see the tears of God. . . . Perhaps his sorrow is splendor.
Scott Sauls (Jesus Outside the Lines: A Way Forward for Those Who Are Tired of Taking Sides)
It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute. My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another. In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.
Frederick Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass)
Everyone," Ross said, "seems a little less concerned than I do. Am I more tender-hearted for others or only tender because of my own conscience?" "We are not–untender," she said. "Not so. But maybe we are more–resigned. When a man is condemned to death we accept it, though it's sad to do so. We know we cannot change it. You hoped to change it–so it's more of a–a disappointment. You feel you have failed. We don't feel that because we never hoped to succeed.
Winston Graham (The Four Swans (Poldark, #6))
In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony and a white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar colour, driven in one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by nature dull and torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relish than any other race.
Herman Melville (Moby Dick)
Will and Willingness.-Someone brought a youth to a wise man, and said, " See, this is one who is being corrupted by women!" The wise man shook his head and smiled. " It is men," he called out, " who corrupt women; and everything that women lack should be atoned for and improved in men,-for man creates for himself the ideal of woman, and woman moulds herself according to this ideal."-" You are too tender-hearted towards women," said one of the bystanders, " you do not know them !" The wise man answered : " Man's attribute is will, woman's attribute is willingness,- such is the law of the sexes, verily! a hard law for woman! All human beings are innocent of their existence, women, however, are doubly innocent; who could have enough of salve and gentleness for them !"-"What about salve! What about gentleness ! " called out another person in the crowd, " we must educate women better!"-" We must educate men better," said the wise man, and made a sign to the youth to follow him.-The youth, however, did not follow him.
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)
It would be an especially difficult vocation for a girl like her: she’s so tender-hearted, so sensitive. She’s been protected from the worst in human nature: how would she cope, once brought face to face with that worst? She ought to choose a safer career path, such as medicine, or perhaps dentistry. And marry a stable and loving husband eventually, of course. She shouldn’t fritter herself away on a world of illusions—of vanishing rainbows, of bursting bubbles, of cloud-capped towers—the way he himself has done.
Margaret Atwood (Hag-Seed)
That accounts for his crying so. Poor creature!” ”Well--you must do the sticking--there's no help for it. I'll showyou how. Or I'll do it myself--I think I could. Though as it issuch a big pig I had rather Challow had done it. However, his basketo' knives and things have been already sent on here, and we can use'em.” ”Of course you shan't do it,” said Jude. ”I'll do it, since it mustbe done.” He went out to the sty, shovelled away the snow for the space of acouple of yards or more, and placed the stool in front, with theknives and ropes at hand. A robin peered down at the preparationsfrom the nearest tree, and, not liking the sinister look of thescene, flew away, though hungry. By this time Arabella had joinedher husband, and Jude, rope in hand, got into the sty, and noosed theaffrighted animal, who, beginning with a squeak of surprise, rose torepeated cries of rage. Arabella opened the sty-door, and togetherthey hoisted the victim on to the stool, legs upward, and while Judeheld him Arabella bound him down, looping the cord over his legs tokeep him from struggling. The animal's note changed its quality. It was not now rage, but thecry of despair; long-drawn, slow and hopeless. ”Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have hadthis to do!” said Jude. ”A creature I have fed with my own hands.” ”Don't be such a tender-hearted fool! There's the sticking-knife--the one with the point. Now whatever you do, don't stick un toodeep.” ”I'll stick him effectually, so as to make short work of it. That'sthe chief thing.” ”You must not!” she cried. ”The meat must be well bled, and to dothat he must die slow. We shall lose a shilling a score if the meatis red and bloody! Just touch the vein, that's all. I was broughtup to it, and I know. Every good butcher keeps un bleeding long.He ought to be eight or ten minutes dying, at least.” ”He shall not be half a minute if I can help it, however the meat maylook,” said Jude determinedly. Scraping the bristles from the pig'supturned throat, as he had seen the butchers do, he slit the fat;then plunged in the knife with all his might. ”'Od damn it all!” she cried, ”that ever I should say it! You'veover-stuck un! And I telling you all the time--” ”Do be quiet, Arabella, and have a little pity on the creature!
Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure)
Jane and Mr. Nobley entered the great hall, the ceiling dazzling with thousands of real candles that put fire into the white dresses and cravats. Five musicians were seated on a dais--a cello and two violins (or maybe a viola?), a harpsichord, and some kind of wind instrument. From keys and strings, they coaxed a grand prelude to the minuet. Jane looked at everything, smiling at the amusement park novelty of it all. She looked at Mr. Nobley. He was beaming at her. At last. “You are stunning,” he said, and every inch of him seemed to swear that it was true. “Oh,” she said. He kissed her gloved fingers. He was still smiling. There was something different about him tonight, and she couldn’t place what it was. Some new plot twist, she presumed. She was eager to roll around in all the plot she could on her last night, though once or twice her eyes strayed to spot Martin. Mr. Nobley stood opposite her in a line of ten men. She watched Amelia and Captain East perform the figures. They held each other’s gazes, they smiled with the elation of new love. All very convincing. Poor Amelia, thought Jane. It was a bit cruel, now that she thought about it, all these actors who made women fall in love with them. Amelia seemed so tenderhearted, and Miss Charming and her heaving breasts so delighted with this world. Jane caught sight of a very striking Colonel Andrews who, now that she watched him dance, might just be gay. Jane felt a thrumming of foreboding. All the ladies were so happy and open-hearted and eager to love. What would happen to them in the dregs of tomorrow?
Shannon Hale (Austenland (Austenland, #1))
Has it never occurred to you that that miserable clown may have a soul–a living, struggling human soul, tied down into that crooked hulk of a body and forced to slave for it? You that are so tender-hearted to everything–you that pity the body in its fool’s dress and bells–have you never thought of the wretched soul that has not even motley to cover its horrible nakedness? Think of it shivering with cold, stilled with shame and misery, before all those people–feeling their jeers that cut like a whip–their laughter, that burns like red-hot iron on the bare flesh! Think of it looking round–so helpless before them all–for the mountains that will not fall on it–for the rocks that have not the heart to cover it–envying the rats that can creep into some hole in the earth and hide; and remember that a soul is dumb–it has no voice to cry out–it must endure, and endure, and endure.
Ethel Lilian Voynich (خرمگس)
She was not enjoying her match half so much as Edmund had enjoyed his; not because she had any doubt about hitting the apple but because Susan was so tender-hearted that she almost hated to beat someone who had been beaten already. The Dwarf watched her keenly as she drew the shaft to her ear. A moment later, with a little soft thump which they could all hear in that quiet place, the apple fell to the grass with Susan’s arrow in it. “Oh, well done, Su,” shouted the other children. “It wasn’t really any better than yours,” said Susan to the Dwarf. “I think there was a tiny breath of wind as you shot.” “No, there wasn’t,” said Trumpkin. “Don’t tell me. I know when I am fairly beaten. I won’t even say that the scar of my last wound catches me a bit when I get my arm well back--” “Oh, are you wounded?” asked Lucy. “Do let me look.” “It’s not a sight for little girls,” began Trumpkin, but then he suddenly checked himself. “There I go talking like a fool again,” he said. “I suppose you’re as likely to be a great surgeon as your brother was to be a great swordsman or your sister to be a great archer.
C.S. Lewis (Prince Caspian (Chronicles of Narnia, #2))
It makes me more than sad, it makes my heart burn within me, to see that folk can make a jest of earnest men; of chaps who comed to ask for a bit o' fire for th' old granny, as shivers in th' cold; for a bit o' bedding, and some warm clothing to the poor wife as lies in labour on th' damp flags; and for victuals for the childer, whose little voices are getting too faint and weak to cry aloud wi' hunger. For, brothers, is not them the things we ask for when we ask for more wage? We donnot want dainties, we want bellyfuls; we donnot want gimcrack coats and waistcoats, we want warm clothes, and so that we get 'em we'd not quarrel wi' what they're made on. We donnot want their grand houses, we want a roof to cover us from the rain, and the snow, and the storm; ay, and not alone to cover us, but the helpless ones that cling to us in the keen wind, and ask us with their eyes why we brought 'em into th' world to suffer?" He lowered his deep voice almost to a whisper. "I've seen a father who had killed his child rather than let it clem before his eyes; and he were a tender-hearted man." He began again in his usual tone. "We come to th' masters wi' full hearts, to ask for them things I named afore. We know that they've gotten money, as we've earned for 'em; we know trade is mending, and that they've large orders, for which they'll be well paid; we ask for our share o' th' payment; for, say we, if th' masters get our share of payment it will only go to keep servants and horses, to more dress and pomp. Well and good, if yo choose to be fools we'll not hinder you, so long as you're just; but our share we must and will have; we'll not be cheated. We want it for daily bread, for life itself; and not for our own lives neither (for there's many a one here, I know by mysel, as would be glad and thankful to lie down and die out o' this weary world), but for the lives of them little ones, who don't yet know what life is, and are afeard of death. Well, we come before th' masters to state what we want, and what we must have, afore we'll set shoulder to their work; and they say, 'No.' One would think that would be enough of hard-heartedness, but it isn't. They go and make jesting pictures of us! I could laugh at mysel, as well as poor John Slater there; but then I must be easy in my mind to laugh. Now I only know that I would give the last drop o' my blood to avenge us on yon chap, who had so little feeling in him as to make game on earnest, suffering men!
Elizabeth Gaskell (Mary Barton)
8Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be
Anonymous (Jesus Calling Devotional Bible, NKJV: Enjoying Peace in His Presence)
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph. 4:30–5:2)
Scotty Smith (Everyday Prayers: 365 Days to a Gospel-Centered Faith)
Whenever he had to leave her, Boltzmann, who was tender-hearted, was not able to hold back his tears.
Carlo Cercignani (Ludwig Boltzmann: The Man Who Trusted Atoms)