Tenderness Quotes

“Violence is weakness. True strength comes not through brutality and savagery, but through tenderness, mercy and grace.”
― Mango Wodzak, The Eden Fruitarian Guidebook

“I don't see what women see in other women," I told Doctor Nolan in my interview that noon. "What does a woman see in a woman that she can't see in a man?"
Doctor Nolan paused. Then she said, "Tenderness." That shut me up.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The air between them was changed from what he remembered. There had always been tenderness but now there was a charge, too. He was aware of his body and hers alone.”
― Fatima Farheen Mirza, A Place for Us

“How do you wipe away pain? You don’t. You put in tenderness, compassion and joy. You cling to hope and then you offer everything to God. And you wait, with faith you see all things anew – light shines out from darkness, happiness grows through every pain, and all things become indeed so very beautiful in His time.”
― Jocelyn Soriano, 366 Days of Compassion: One Year Catholic Devotional

“It isn’t violence that can break through our hearts. It isn’t force that binds us and keeps us together. Only tenderness has the power to accomplish what the fullness of love desires to do. Tenderness that approaches us little by little, and handles our feelings with the deepest affection and delight. Tenderness that is willing to wait for the right time until we are ready and we are no longer afraid.”
― Jocelyn Soriano, 366 Days of Compassion: One Year Catholic Devotional

“Your tenderness has pervaded into the very pore of my being. Last night I inhaled the fragrance of the moon!”
― Avijeet Das

“I wonder if you would come and sleep in the night with me. And talk.”
― Kent Haruf

“You can choose a love and a life that does not break you. You can claim a softer beauty and a kinder want. Even your animal hunger can soften its rough edges and say a full-throated yes to what is good and kind and holy. Know that insanity is not a prerequisite for passion and that there is another pathway to your art, one that does not demand your pain as payment for its own becoming. Love, it doesn't have to hurt anymore.”
― Jeanette LeBlanc

“Some women are truly beautiful. The light of love shines through their souls. And the world gets drenched in their inimitable light of love. But do not try to dominate them. Let them keep their softness and tenderness.”
― Avijeet Das

“Music speaks the language of the soul, penetrating into the past and resonating into the future, unearthing pain and tenderness and sorrow and joy, reminding us of our infinite fragility and extraordinary strength, reigniting our dreams and passions once again to remind us of who we are meant to be.”
― L.R. Knost

“Instead of beating yourself up when you make the same old mistakes again and again, break promises to yourself, or fall into destructive habits, close your eyes and silently whisper through time into your past, "I'm here. I'm listening. What do you need? Where does it hurt? How can I help?" Then listen for echoes of pain and loss and fear and unmet needs. Let yourself feel and experience those emotions as they surface. And then treat yourself as tenderly as you would a sad and scared child. Healing old hurts can only begin when the children we once were feel safe enough to speak their hearts to the adults we are now.”
― L.R. Knost

“We all need to be far more gentler with each other.
And realise that some people's heart's injure with far more ease than others and dance to a quieter music.”
― Mimi Novic, Your Light Is The Key

“This would have been the perfect time to continue with his ravishment scheme. He could lay siege to her virginal clothing. Ruthlessly dismantle her inhibitions. Steal an hour or two of fleeting pleasure before proving beyond a shadow of doubt: Romance is an exercise in willful delusion and nothing—nothing—ends happily. At least, not in this castle, and not with a man like him.
There was only one wrinkle in that scheme.
He liked her too much to go through with it.”
― Tessa Dare, Romancing the Duke

“Love has a certain element of tenderness, which alone pierces through the heart and binds us more intimately than any force in the universe ever can.”
― Jocelyn Soriano, 366 Days of Compassion: One Year Catholic Devotional

“And yet, even while they baffled him, they aroused within his heart a feeling he had never known before. When- which was not often, but sometimes happened- they burst into tears of utter frustration or despair, their tiny disappointments seemed to him more tragic than Man’s long retreat after the loss of his Galactic Empire. That was something too huge and remote for comprehension, but the weeping of a child could pierce one to the heart.
Alvin had met love in Diaspar, but now he was learning something equally precious, and without which love itself could never reach its highest fulfillment but must remain forever incomplete. He was learning tenderness.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars

“The heart enveloped in the tenderness of God passes that tenderness around indiscriminately, making no distinction between the worthy and the unworthy.”
― Brennan Manning, The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives – A Stirring Invitation to Accept God's Unfathomable Love

“On Love - Any husband who stammers that he's just been too busy to tell his wife he loves her is a lazy fool or a liar.”
― Marsha Hinds

“My brain came alight with tenderness for her. I felt so sorry for everything. I yearned to embrace her, kiss her even, to stay with her, always her, my sister, my friend to the end. It was a story after all, even if a sick one. It was completely ours.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“...that the doctor being himself a mortal man, should be diligent and tender in relieving his suffering patients, inasmuch as he himself must one day be a like sufferer.”
― Thomas Sydenham

“In a moment of naked honesty, ask yourself, 'Do I wholeheartedly trust that God likes me'... in this moment, right now, right here, with all my faults and weaknesses?' If you answer without hesitation, 'Oh yes, God does like me; in fact, He's very fond of me.' you're living in the wisdom of accepted tenderness."

re: A.W. Tozer's statement "What comes into our minds when we think about God, is the most important thing about us.”
― Brennan Manning, The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives – A Stirring Invitation to Accept God's Unfathomable Love

“Tenderness is a tough spirit.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“She is a beautiful princess who has chosen you to be the prince in her life. She deserves a love that is truly beautiful and magical. Love her with all your sensitivity and tenderness. And never ever stop loving her...”
― Avijeet Das

“No poet ever wrote a poem to dishonor life, to compromise high ideals, to scorn religious views, to demean hope or gratitude, to argue against tenderness, to place rancor before love, or to praise littleness of soul. Not one. Not ever.”
― Mary Oliver, Rules For The Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse

“I cry now as I write this. So lasting are the scars of the child who never feels worthy of love. So many cycles in my life of having to learn that I am indeed worthy of tenderness.”
― Jewel, Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story

“You speak to me with the same sweet tenderness. We go to the same hang outs in our sleepy town. Your lips are the same as they press against mine. The only thing that has changed is me.”
― Liz Newman

“Life is hard but it never loses its grace. If you aren't hard enough you cannot live but if you're not tender you don't deserve to be alive.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, The Tao of Physical and Spiritual

“The two lovers stood, hand in hand and close enough to feel their breath, overlooking, the calmness and harshness of the sea, a tenderness to its ferocity.”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“Hours, or days, or minutes passed before I felt the light touch of a hand on my head.
"Elisabeth."
A young man looked down at me, his mismatched eyes soft, the tilt of his mouth tender. It was the tenderness that undid me, undid the strings I'd bound about my heart. Longing, fear, grief, resentment, and desire came tumbling out. I began to cry.
The young man reached out to wipe my tears away, and in his touch there was nothing but kindness. I wanted to take his compassion and wrap it about me for comfort.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Wintersong

“i am only beginning to realize how fragmented and uncoordinated I am. My left hand does not know what my right hand is doing. My heart tells me to go in one direction, and my mind another, and I do not know which to obey. I am furious with Mother for not being my mother, and I am filled with an aching tenderness I have never known before. There are rough waters below the surface of my consciousness, and strange, submarine winds. The submerged me is more aware of wild tides and undertows than the surface. One deep calls another, because of the noise of the water floods; all the waves and storms are gone over me. And above the surface the brazen sun shines, heat shimmers on the hills, and the long fronds of the golden willow Mother planted ten or more years ago droop in the stillness.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother

“She had a sweet voice, a voice with a warm and tender quality. This was strange, because her face was cold, as though warmth and tenderness were dead in her.”
― Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie