We are slow to believe that which if believed would hurt our feelings.
OvidRead
Whether you call my heart affectionate, or you call it womanish: I confess, that to my misfortune, it is soft.
Interpretation
The speaker admits to being emotionally vulnerable and sensitive, often perceived as a weakness.
In this quote, the author reflects on the nature of love and affection, acknowledging that their heart is soft and tender, which may be deemed as a flaw or weakness, particularly in the context of gender expectations. The speaker seems to recognize the dichotomy between emotional strength and perceived weakness in being sensitive, ultimately embracing their vulnerability as an essential part of their identity.
In practice
Use this quote in a speech about the importance of emotional intelligence in relationships.
We are slow to believe that which if believed would hurt our feelings.
All things human hang by a slender thread; and that which seemed to stand strong suddenly falls and sinks in ruins.
A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow.
Fas est ab hoste doceri._x000D_ One should learn even from one's enemies.
Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.
The end doesn't justify the means.
The heart, like the mind, has a memory. And in it are kept the most precious keepsakes.
You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.
In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.
What's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos.
Although love dwells in gorgeous palaces, and sumptuous apartments, more willingly than in miserable and desolate cottages, it cannot be denied but that he sometimes causes his power to be felt in the gloomy recesses of forests, among the most bleak and rugged mountains, and in the dreary caves of a desert.
And yet ... But what if ... I want to do something impossible. Something astounding and unheard of. I want to scrub the moss off the Space Shuttle and fly Julie to the moon and colonise it, or float a capsized cruise ship to some distant island where no one will protest us, or just harness the magic that brings me into the brains of the Living and use it to bring Julie into mine, because it's warm in here, it's quiet and lovely, and in here we aren't an absurd juxtaposition, we are perfect.
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