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61 " I profess not to know how women’s hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero. "
― Washington Irving , The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
62 " Not being assaulted is not a privilege to be earned through the judicious application of personal safety strategies. A woman should be able to walk down the street at 4 in the morning in nothing but her socks, blind drunk, without being assaulted, and I, for one, am not going to do anything to imply that she is in any way responsible for her own assault if she fails to Adequately Protect Herself. Men aren’t helpless dick-driven maniacs who can’t help raping a vulnerable woman. It disrespects EVERYONE. "
― Emily Nagoski
63 " The idea that women's strong attachments to each other are what make them so vulnerable is horrifying. I count my close friendships with a few girls that I know as one of the best things I have going for me right now. My love for them leaves me open to hurt, but ... all love does, or at least that's the cliche. Perhaps girls and women do come to love each other too quickly, or once they are trapped into appearing as though they love one another, they don't want to back out of it. That is probably true. But a fear of confrontation in relationships is the downside. The ability to love easily is a positive. "
― Phyllis Chesler , Woman's Inhumanity to Woman
64 " Outside voices are the feelings, wants and opinions of others that ring so loudly in your ears, you can't hear anymore what's true for yourself ... when outside voices take over, they keep you from knowing and trusting the best guide you have, your own inner experience ... Needing other people makes us feel vulnerable, and feeling vulnerable causes our outside voices to go into veritable feeding frenzies. In fact, if you're in the midst of an outside-voice attack, there's a good chance you've done, tried to do, or were thinking about doing, something very vulnerable for you. . "
65 " Something else emerges from this discussion about us as human individuals: we're not fixed, stable intellects riding along peering at the world through the lenses of our eyes like the pilots of people-shaped spacecraft. We are affected constantly by what's going on around us. Whether our flexibility is based in neuroplasticity or in less dramatic aspects of the brain, we have to start acknowledging that we are mutable, persuadable and vulnerable to clever distortions, and that very often what we want to be is a matter of constant effort rather than attaining a given state and then forgetting about it. Being human isn't like hanging your hat on a hook and leaving it there, it's like walking in a high wind: you have to keep paying attention. You have to be engaged with the world. "
― Nick Harkaway , The Blind Giant
66 " I'm changing and I'm terrified of how weak I feel, how vulnerable my flesh and soul has become because of this girl. "
― K. Weikel , Building Monsters
67 " We all see very clearly in others tendencies which we, ourselves, have overcome. The older and wiser we grow, the more we can see the arrogance of youth. The more authentic we become, the more we can see the lies of insecurity. The more vulnerable we allow ourselves to be, the more we see the dangerous symptoms of unexpressed emotions. There is no finish line to learning. There is no point where we're done growing, and all we will ever do is look down upon others who are behind us. No one is ever at the top. We are all growing at our own rates, and no matter how terrible or how enlightened we fancy ourselves to be today, the future will be sure to give us a different perspective. There is really no use in comparing yourself to others. There will always be someone ahead and someone behind, and there will be dozens (if not hundreds) of different scales and gradients to be behind and ahead on. To be number one is never final. It is and always will be a momentary, fleeting instant. But to be a growing version of yourself? That, you can be. You can be that every single day. "
― Vironika Tugaleva
68 " June has never looked more beautiful than she does now, unadorned and honest, vulnerable yet invincible. "
― Marie Lu , Legend (Legend, #1)
69 " Young women today feel vulnerable to judgment; if a harsh sentence is passed (or even suspected or projected), it is not her reputation that suffers so much as the stability of her moral universe. They did not have long to explore the sexual revolution and make it their own. Before the old chains had grown cold, while young women were still rubbing the circulation back into their ankles and taking tentative steps forward, the beauty industries levied a heavy toll on further investigations, and beauty pornography offered them designer bondage. "
― Naomi Wolf , The Beauty Myth
70 " Most urgently, women's identity must be premised upon our " beauty" so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air. "
71 " There will be people who admire your strength and courage. But, there will also be those willing to knock everything you say and do. They think it goes unnoticed, but you have excellent peripheral vision. The trick is to never let them get the best of you. Don't become vulnerable to their deceptive nature. You were born to succeed. "
― , Sweet Destiny
72 " There is nothing as delicate, as stunning, and as vulnerable as the heart. "
― Jacquelyn Nicole Davis , Trace The Grace: A Memoir
73 " Future strong leadership means being willing to stand alone. Often, the times we feel most vulnerable are when we stand alone, before others join us. When we choose to be the first voice echoing above the silence. Standing strong, alone. "
― Bill Jensen , Future Strong
74 " The loner who looks fabulous is one of the most vulnerable loners of all. "
― , Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto
75 " The same sensitivity that opens artists to Being also makes them vulnerable to the dark powers of non-Being. It is no accident that many creative people--including Dante, Pascal, Goethe, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Beethoven, Rilke, Blake, and Van Gogh--struggled with depression, anxiety, and despair. They paid a heavy price to wrest their gifts from the clutches of non-Being. But this is what true artists do: they make their own frayed lives the cable for the surges of power generated in the creative force fields of Being and non-Being. (Beyond Religion, p. 124) "
― David N. Elkins
76 " Art goes into the world unarmed, vulnerable to every quirk of fate, and it must survive only by its power to move men not to destroy it. "
― Chelsea Quinn Yarbro , The Palace (Saint-Germain, #2)
77 " Even religious people are vulnerable to this longing. Those who belong to communities of faith have acquired a certain patience with what is sometimes called organized religion. They have learned to forgive themselves. They do not expect their institutions to stand in for God, and they are happy to use inherited maps for some of life's journeys. They do not need to walk off every cliff all by themselves. Yet they too can harbor the sense that there is more to life that they are being shown. Where is the secret hidden? Who has the key to the treasure box of More? "
― Barbara Brown Taylor
78 " Learn to observe your emotions without needing to act or distract yourself from them. Within that stillness your truest most vulnerable thoughts will arise and it is these thoughts that will show you where your healing work must begin. "
― Alaric Hutchinson , Living Peace: Essential Teachings for Enriching Life
79 " Positive legacy of the 1960s was the revolutions in civil rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, and gay rights, which began to consolidate power in the 1990s as the baby boomers became the establishment. Their targeting of rape, battering, hate crimes, gay-bashing, and child abuse reframed law-and-order from a reactionary cause to a progressive one, and their efforts to make the home, workplace, schools, and streets safer for vulnerable groups (as in the feminist “Take Back the Night” protests) made these environments safer for everyone. "
― Steven Pinker , The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
80 " Human beings, whatever their backgrounds, are more open than we think, that their behavior cannot be confidently predicted from their past, that we are all creatures vulnerable to new thoughts, new attitudes.And while such vulnerability creates all sorts of possibilities, both good and bad, its very existence is exciting. It means that no human being should be written off, no change in thinking deemed impossible. "
― Howard Zinn , You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times