The toughness I was learning was not a martyred doggedness, a dumb heroism, but the art of accommodation. I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.
Interpretation
True toughness is about adaptability and sensitivity, rather than sheer strength or stubbornness.
Gretel Ehrlich's quote challenges traditional notions of toughness and resilience. She suggests that real strength lies in the ability to adapt and accommodate, rather than in an unyielding mindset. Embracing vulnerability and tenderness, according to her, reveals a deeper, more profound form of fierceness. This perspective reframes our understanding of what it means to be tough, implying that sensitivity can coexist with strength.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to emphasize the importance of adaptability in challenging situations.
Love life first, then march through the gates of each season; go inside nature and develop the discipline to stop destructive behavior; learn tenderness toward experience, then make decisions based on creating biological wealth that includes all people, animals, cultures, currencies, languages, and the living things as yet undiscovered; listen to the truth the land will tell you; act accordingly.
All through autumn we hear a double voice: one says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying. The paradox is exquisite. We feel what the Japanese call "aware"--an almost untranslatable word meaning something like "beauty tinged with sadness.
Animals give us their constant, unjaded faces, and we burden them with our bodies and civilized ordeals.
Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.
Our status as a free society and world power is not based on brute strength. When we've taken up arms, it has been for the defense of freedom for ourselves and for other peaceful nations who needed our help. But now, faced with the development of weapons with immense destructive power, we've no choice but to maintain ready defense forces that are second to none. Yes, the cost is high, but the price of neglect would be infinitely higher.
First of all, you ask me if the God of Christians forgives one who doesn't believe and doesn't seek the faith. Premise that - and it's the fundamental thing - the mercy of God has no limits if one turns to him with a sincere and contrite heart; the question for one who doesn't believe in God lies in obeying one's conscience.
...rapid motion through space elates one.
When you start to think of revenge, you start to think of hate. I don't believe in hating people. It's a retrogressive thing.
Good or bad people can be democratically elected, but it is always easy to fight for human rights under this system.
Liberty is always freedom from the government.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.