quotations about weakness
"What do you consider to be your biggest weakness?" Most job applicants have encountered this interview question multiple times. They have subsequently become adept at dodging it completely. Usually, this is achieved by dressing up a positive attribute as a "weakness".
CHRIS JAGER
"Killer Interview Question: What Is Your Greatest Weakness That's Not A Secret Strength?", Lifehacker, April 10, 2017
We always weaken whatever we exaggerate.
JEAN-FRANÇOIS DE LA HARPE
Mélanie
At first it seems a dreadful thing to place a gentle and sensitive nature in contact, in familiarity, and even under the rule of coarse and strong buoyant natures. Nor should this be in general attempted. The certain result is present suffering, and the expected good is remote and disputable. Nevertheless, it is no artificial difficulty which we here encounter--none which we can hope by educational contrivances to meet or vanquish. The difficulty is in truth the existence of the world. It is the fact, that by the constitution of society the bold, the vigorous, and the buoyant, rise and rule; and that the weak, the shrinking, and the timid, fall and serve.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Man's greatest weakness is his love of life.
JOSEPH COLEMAN
Unfinished Work: Unfinished Work: The Struggle to Build an Aging American Workforce
Now go save your kingdom from the eight-legged monster whose only weakness is popcorn flavored jelly beans!
KRISTINA CURTIN
A Muse with a Story
Weakness can never be beautiful, either morally or physically: and though the feminine type may possess greater softness and more feeling, it must be active, firm, and healthy, or it cannot be beautiful: the weak mind, distracted by alternations of feeling, and constant craving for help and sympathy from others, cannot at the same time possess that tenderness and unselfish devotion which is the loveliest trait of the female character.
M. MARTELL
attributed, Day's Collacon
Your awareness of your weakness is a blessing as it helps you remain humble and keeps you turning to the Savior. The Spirit not only comforts you, but He is also the agent by which the Atonement works a change in your very nature. Then weak things become strong.
HENRY B. EYRING
Deseret News, March 25, 2017
The basest person is capable of perceiving the weaknesses of the greatest, the most stupid, the errors in the thought of the most intelligent.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.
GENE WOLFE
Shadow & Claw
Sometimes, being weak is more beneficial than being too strong. Being strong brings in attack but being weak attracts help. The hard and stiff can be broken, but the soft and flexible will prevail.
JOSHUA CHOON-MIN KANG
"The Secret Contained in the Smallest, Weakest Step", Christianity Today, July 29, 2016
Achilles, without his heel, you wouldn't even know his name today.
STAN LEE
"Stan Lee: From Marvel Comics Genius to Purveyor of Wonder with POW!", PR, March 13, 2006
The greater part of this difficulty -- and perhaps the most slippery part of the upper path -- is the temptation to judge ourselves -- to loath ourselves for whatever that "weakness" is that now sits exposed. The act of judging ourselves in times like these seems natural and even necessary if we hope to ever "outgrow" our own limitations as revealed. But this kind of self-laceration is a Trojan horse within whose dark recesses lies hidden a certain fact that, once perceived, frees us from the torment of self-judgment.
GUY FINLEY
The Secret of Your Immortal Self: Key Lessons for Realizing the Divinity Within
I've known people who thought that reaching their potential would come from shoring up their weaknesses. But do you know what happens when you spend all your time working on your weaknesses and never developing your strengths? If you work really hard, you might claw your way all the way to mediocrity! But you'll never get beyond it.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Leadership Gold
The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong.
GEORGES BIDAULT
London Observer, July 15, 1962
This is because we grow up in a society that tells us that this is an eat-or-be-eaten world. We grow up in a society that tells us that being weak is a sin, and that nobody else is to be blamed for this but yourself. Never mind that the world is already unequal as it is, that some people are already being discriminated on the basis of their race, color, and gender.
DON KEVIN HAPAL
"When the bell rings: My story of getting bullied", Rappler, January 17, 2017
When imperialism feels weak, it resorts to brute force.
HUGO CHÁVEZ
speech, January 31, 2005
A sneer is the weapon of the weak.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Conversations on Some of the Old Poets
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.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
There are some that are bold and strong and incessant and energetic and hard, and to these is the world's glory; and some are timid and meek and impotent and cowardly and rejected and obscure.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Each life stage involves a critical psychological conflict or crisis that must be resolved unceasingly if the human being is to remain psychologically alive ... there is a focal tension or conflict between a positive, growth-oriented strength and a negative growth-impeding weakness; and healthy growth requires that the individual obtain a preponderance of the designated strength over the weakness, though the weakness is never entirely overcome.
ALLAN HUGH COLE
Converging Horizons: Essays in Religion, Psychology, and Caregiving