C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Tenderness
Tenderness is the infancy of love.
Tenderness is a virtue.
Tenderness is one repose of passion.
The dew of compassion is a tear.
Want of tenderness is want of parts, and is no less a proof of stupidity than depravity.
The less tenderness a man has in his nature, the more he requires from others.
I was never fit to say a word to a sinner, except when I had a broken heart myself.
There never was any heart truly great and generous that was not also tender and compassionate.
When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.
The quiet tenderness of Chaucer, where you almost seem to hear the hot tears falling, and the simple choking words sobbed out.
Tenderness, without a capacity of relieving, only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for assistance.
The most powerful symptom of love is a tenderness which, at times, becomes almost insupportable.
We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.
While we would have our young sisters imitate, as they cannot fail to love, the conduct of Ruth, will not their elders do well to ponder on, and imitate the tenderness of Naomi! Would we have our daughters Ruths, we must be Naomis.
Courage is by no means incompatible with tenderness. On the contrary, gentleness and tenderness have been found to characterize the men, no less than the women, who have done the most courageous deeds.
A tender-hearted and compassionate disposition, which inclines men to pity and feel the misfortunes of others, and which is, even for its own sake, incapable of involving any man in ruin and misery, is of all tempers of mind the most amiable; and though it seldom receives much honor, is worthy of the highest.
I have great admiration for power, a great terror of weakness, especially in my own sex, yet feel that my love is for those who overcome the mental and moral suffering and temptation through excess of tenderness rather than through excess of strength.