Quotes about tender
page 5

Sally Struthers photo

“If a man is pictured chopping off a woman's breast, it only gets an R rating; but if, God forbid, a man is pictured kissing a woman's breast, it gets an X rating. Why is violence more acceptable than tenderness?”

Sally Struthers (1947) Actress, spokesperson, activist

Quoted in John Cook, Leslie Ann Gibson, The Book of Positive Quotations (2007) p. 103 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_WsmIGNyFJ8C&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=%22If+a+man+is+pictured+chopping+off+a+woman's+breast,+it+only+gets+an+R+rating%22&source=bl&ots=TSvoWnCK-s&sig=zuUzVqr8hcmGK44rePU67_x9ppo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6MkzT7nOGMrH0QWfqLmgAg&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22If%20a%20man%20is%20pictured%20chopping%20off%20a%20woman's%20breast%2C%20it%20only%20gets%20an%20R%20rating%22&f=false

William Cowper, 1st Earl Cowper photo

“I should have all manner of tenderness for the right of the College; they are nurseries of Religion and Learning, and therefore all donations for increase and augmentation of their revenue are to be liberally expounded.”

William Cowper, 1st Earl Cowper (1665–1723) English politician and first Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Devit v. College of Dublin (1720). Gilbert Eq. Ca. 248; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 242.

Matthew Lewis (writer) photo
John Calvin photo
Albert Einstein photo
William Winter photo

“His love was like the liberal air,—
Embracing all, to cheer and bless;
And every grief that mortals share
Found pity in his tenderness.”

William Winter (1836–1917) American writer

I. H. Bromley, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Samuel Butler photo

“The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Future and Past
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

Maxwell D. Taylor photo
John Milton photo
Salvador Dalí photo
Alexander Pope photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
George William Curtis photo

“But when we freed the slaves we did not say to them, 'Caste shall not grind you with the right hand, but it shall with the left'. We said, 'Caste shall not grind you at all, and you shall have the same guarantees of freedom that we have'. President Johnson defines the liberty springing from the Emancipation amendment as the right to labor and enjoy the fruit of labor to its fullest extent. It is easy to quarrel with this as with every definition. But it is good enough, and it is as true of Connecticut as of Missouri that no man fully enjoys the fruit of his labor who does not have an equality of right before the law and a voice in making the law. That is the final security of the commonwealth, and we are bound to help every citizen attain it, whether it be the foreigner who comes ignorant and wretched to our shores or the native whom a cruel prejudice opposes. Do you tell me that we have nothing to do with the State laws of Alabama? I answer that the people of the United States are the sole and final judges of the measures necessary to the full enjoyment of the freedom which they have anywhere bestowed. If we choose, we may trust a certain class in the unorganized States to secure this liberty, just as we might have chosen to trust Mister Vallandigham, Mister Horatio Seymour, and Mister Fernando Wood to carry on the war. But as we wanted honor and not dishonor, as we wanted victory and not surrender, we chose to trust it to Farragut and Sherman, to Sheridan and Grant. If you don't want a thing done, says the old proverb, send; if you do, go yourself. When Grant started. Uncle Sam went himself. So, if we don't care whether we keep our word to those whom we have freed, we may send, by leaving them to the tender mercies of those who despise and distrust them. But if we do care for our own honor and the national welfare, we shall go ourselves, and through a national bureau and voluntary associations of education and aid, or in some better way if it can be devised, keep fast hold of the hands of those whom the President calls our wards, and not relinquish those hands until we leave in them every guarantee of freedom that we ourselves enjoy.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Pearl S.  Buck photo
James Branch Cabell photo

“The Terrible and Marvellous History of Manuel Pig-Tender That Afterwards Was Named Manuel the Redeemer.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Title of a fictional work that he "quotes" from at the start of the book.
The Certain Hour (1916)

George Washington Plunkitt photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Charles Darwin photo

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.”

volume I, chapter V: "On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties during Primeval and Civilised Times" (second edition, 1874) pages 133-134 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=156&itemID=F944&viewtype=image
The last sentence of the first paragraph is often quoted in isolation to make Darwin seem heartless.
The Descent of Man (1871)

Kyuzo Mifune photo
Ray Comfort photo
Jackson Browne photo
Hilaire Belloc photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Henry Moore photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Daniel McCallum photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Martin Farquhar Tupper photo
Henry Adams photo

“If you cannot feel the color and quality,— the union of naïveté and art,— the refinement,— the infinite delicacy and tenderness — of this little poem ["Tombeor de Notre Dame"], then nothing will matter much to you; and if you can feel it, you can feel, without more assistance, the majesty of Chartres.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The anonymous thirteenth-century poem "Tombeor de Notre Dame", of which Adams gives a fairly detailed summary, is translated in Of the Tumbler of Our Lady and Other Miracles, edited by Alice Kemp-Welsh (London: Chatto & Windus, 1909).
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Benjamin Franklin photo
Michael Chabon photo
Will Carleton photo

“Not a log in this buildin' but its memories has got
And not a nail in this old floor but touches a tender spot.”

Will Carleton (1845–1912) poet.

Out of the old House, Nancy, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Natalie Merchant photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo

“Let family worship be short, savory, simple, plain, tender, heavenly.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 471.

Julian of Norwich photo
Ralph Ellison photo
Jeet Thayil photo

“The human Jesus is, to my mind, the ultimate paradigm of such psychic equilibrium. He was absolutely hard on himself and absolutely tender toward others.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

“Confusing ‘Character’ with ‘Temperament’”
Clearing the Ground (1986)
Context: The core in the mystery of what we call personality resides in the individual mix between character and temperament. The most successful personalities are those who achieve the best balance between the strict demands of character and the lenient tolerance of temperament. This balance is the supreme test of genuine leadership, separating the savior from the fanatic.
The human Jesus is, to my mind, the ultimate paradigm of such psychic equilibrium. He was absolutely hard on himself and absolutely tender toward others. He maintained the highest criteria of conduct for himself but was not priggish or censorious or self-righteous about those who were weaker and frailer. Most persons of strength cannot accept or tolerate weakness in others. They are blind to the virtues they do not possess themselves and are fiercely judgmental on one scale of values alone. Jesus was unique, even among religious leaders, in combining the utmost of principle with the utmost of compassion for those unable to meet his standards.
We need to understand temperament better than we do and to recognize its symbiotic relationship to character. There are some things people can do to change and some things they cannot do — character can be formed, but temperament is given. And the strong who cannot bend are just as much to be pitied as the weak who cannot stiffen.

Richard Wright photo
Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Juan Ramón Jimenéz photo

“He is as loving and tender as a child, but strong and sturdy as a rock.”

Source: ‪Platero and I‬ (1917), Ch. 1 : Platero, as translated by Eloïse Roach (1957).
Context: He is as loving and tender as a child, but strong and sturdy as a rock. When on Sundays I ride him through the lanes in the outskirts of the town, slow-moving countrymen, dressed in their Sunday clean, watch him a while, speculatively:
"He is like steel," they say.
Steel, yes. Steel and moon silver at the same time.

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“There are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation approaches those tenderer feelings which are generally supposed to be peculiar to the individual, and to be the happy privilege of private life, and this is one.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Addressing the House of Commons after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1 May 1865).
1860s
Context: There are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation approaches those tenderer feelings which are generally supposed to be peculiar to the individual, and to be the happy privilege of private life, and this is one. Under any circumstances we should have bewailed the catastrophe at Washington; under any circumstances we should have shuddered at the means by which it was accomplished. But in the character of the victim, and even in the accessories of his last moments, there is something so homely and innocent, that it takes the question, as it were, out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy; it touches the heart of nations, and appeals to the domestic sentiment of mankind.
Whatever the various and varying opinions in this House, and in the country generally, on the policy of the late President of the United States, all must agree that in one of the severest trials which ever tested the moral qualities of man he fulfilled his duty with simplicity and strength. …When such crimes are perpetrated the public mind is apt to fall into gloom and perplexity, for it is ignorant alike of the causes and the consequences of such deeds. But it is one of our duties to reassure them under unreasoning panic and despondency. Assassination has never changed the history of the world. I will not refer to the remote past, though an accident has made the most memorable instance of antiquity at this moment fresh in the minds and memory of all around me. But even the costly sacrifice of a Caesar did not propitiate the inexorable destiny of his country.

“Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains”

Aaron Hill (writer) (1685–1750) British writer

Verses Written on a Window in Scotland.
Context: Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains.’Tis the same with common natures:
Use ’em kindly, they rebel;
But be rough as nutmeg-graters,
And the rogues obey you well.

Germaine Greer photo
Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo

“Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

"Break, Break, Break" (1842), st. 4

Vita Sackville-West photo

“I have some weeks in which to steel
My heart and teach myself to feel
Only a sober tenderness
Where once was passion's loveliness.”

Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) English writer and gardener

"And so it ends", a poem cited as probably directed to her sister-in-law, Gwen St. Aubyn, in V. Sackville-West : A Critical Biography (1974) by Michael Stevens, p. 91
Context: And so it ends,
We who were lovers may be friends.
I have some weeks in which to steel
My heart and teach myself to feel
Only a sober tenderness
Where once was passion's loveliness.

Stephen Colbert photo

“I have tender feelings for Nixon, because everybody has warm feelings about their childhood.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Rolling Stone interview http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/americas-anchors-20061116?page=3 (31 October 2006)
Context: I have tender feelings for Nixon, because everybody has warm feelings about their childhood. Actually, I didn't like the Watergate trials 'cause they interrupted The Munsters... Nixon was the last liberal president. He supported women's rights, the environment, ending the draft, youth involvement, and now he's the boogeyman? Kerry couldn't even run on that today.

Starhawk photo

“The God is wild, but his is the wildness of connection, not of domination. Wildness is not the same as violence. Gentleness and tenderness do not translate into wimpiness.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)
Context: One of the great disservices a culture of domination has done to all of us is to confuse the erotic with domination and violence. The God is wild, but his is the wildness of connection, not of domination. Wildness is not the same as violence. Gentleness and tenderness do not translate into wimpiness. When men — or women, for that matter — begin to unleash what is untamed in us, we need to remember that the first images and impulses we encounter will often be the stereotyped paths of power we have learned in a culture of domination. To become truly wild, we must not be sidetracked by the dramas of power-over, the seduction of addictions, or the thrill of control. We must go deeper. <!-- p. 233

Ann Eliza Bleecker photo
Stendhal photo

“The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give.”

Source: La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839), Ch. 7
Context: The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am a man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love my mistress addresses a man and not a prince.

Zabel Yesayan photo

“Who destroys the seeds of past antagonisms in the tender mind of a child and prepares it for a bright, infinite peace of soul. It is of course the child's mother.”

Zabel Yesayan (1878–1943) Armenian writer

Gini…Khağağutyan Hamar [Woman… For Peace] (1911)
Context: All over the world, and quite independently of each other, there is a growing wish for peace. This idea travels around the world, growing stronger all the time and becomes one irresistable and universal ideal. This is the great hope of people who are weary and dissillusioned by wars between nations and social groups. Both the victors and the defeated need an end to hostilities. [... ] Who destroys the seeds of past antagonisms in the tender mind of a child and prepares it for a bright, infinite peace of soul. It is of course the child's mother. [... ] The backbone of the feminist movement in France is formed by the women who get together to achieve peace through education and this movement also determines the direction taken by feminist movements in other countries, with their various branches and supporters

Khalil Gibran photo

“My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every direction and finds pleasure in its swaying.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

Your Thought and Mine
Context: My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every direction and finds pleasure in its swaying. Your thought is an ancient dogma that cannot change you nor can you change it. My thought is new, and it tests me and I test it morn and eve.
You have your thought and I have mine.

“I was humiliated for them, for their apparent insensibility. But I was mistaken in my anxiety — their wish to help, to show her their concern, was real, their feelings were true and lasting, no matter how awkwardly expressed; their love and tenderness and wish to help were from the heart.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
Context: I remember small, slender Mrs. Sacco with her fine copper-colored hair and dark brown, soft, dazed eyes moving from face to face but still smiling uncertainly, surrounded in our offices by women pitying and cuddling her, sympathetic with her as if she were a pretty little girl; they spoke to her as if she were five years old or did not understand — this Italian peasant wife who, for seven long years, had shown moral stamina and emotional stability enough to furnish half a dozen women amply. I was humiliated for them, for their apparent insensibility. But I was mistaken in my anxiety — their wish to help, to show her their concern, was real, their feelings were true and lasting, no matter how awkwardly expressed; their love and tenderness and wish to help were from the heart. All through those last days in Boston, those strangely innocent women enlisted their altar societies, their card clubs their literary round tables, their music circles and their various charities in the campaign to save Sacco and Vanzetti. On their rounds, they came now and then to the office of my outfit in their smart thin frocks, stylish hats, and their indefinable air of eager sweetness and light, bringing money they had collected in the endless, wittily devious ways of women's organizations. They would talk among themselves and to her about how they felt, with tears in their eyes, promising to come again soon with more help. They were known as "sob sisters" by the cynics and the hangers-on of the committee I belonged to who took their money and described their activities as "sentimental orgies," of course with sexual overtones, and they jeered at "bourgeois morality." "Morality" was a word along with "charitable" and "humanitarian" and "liberal," all, at one time, in the odor of sanctity but now despoiled and rotting in the gutter where suddenly it seemed they belonged. I found myself on the side of the women; I resented the nasty things said about them by these self-appointed world reformers and I thought again, as I had more than once in Mexico, that yes, the world was a frightening enough place as it was, but think what a hell it would be if such people really got the power to do the things they planned.

Virgil photo

“So strong is habit in tender years.”
Adeo in teneris consuescere multum est.

Book II, line 272 (tr. Fairclough)
Compare: "Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." Alexander Pope, Moral Essays: Epistle I (1734), line 150.
Georgics (29 BC)

Ellen G. White photo

“Their interest was aroused by figures drawn from the surroundings of their daily life. None who listened to the Saviour could feel that they were neglected or forgotten. The humblest, the most sinful, heard in His teaching a voice that spoke to them in sympathy and tenderness.
And He had another reason for teaching in parables. Among the multitudes that gathered about Him, there were priests and rabbis, scribes and elders, Herodians and rulers, world-loving, bigoted, ambitious men, who desired above all things to find some accusation against Him. Their spies followed His steps day after day, to catch from His lips something that would cause His condemnation, and forever silence the One who seemed to draw the world after Him. The Saviour understood the character of these men, and He presented truth in such a way that they could find nothing by which to bring His case before the Sanhedrim. In parables He rebuked the hypocrisy and wicked works of those who occupied high positions, and in figurative language clothed truth of so cutting a character that had it been spoken in direct denunciation, they would not have listened to His words, and would speedily have put an end to His ministry.”

Source: Christ's Object Lessons (1900), Ch. 1, p. 22
Context: Christ had truths to present which the people were unprepared to accept or even to understand. For this reason also He taught them in parables. By connecting His teaching with the scenes of life, experience, or nature, He secured their attention and impressed their hearts. Afterward, as they looked upon the objects that illustrated His lessons, they recalled the words of the divine Teacher. To minds that were open to the Holy Spirit, the significance of the Saviour's teaching unfolded more and more. Mysteries grew clear, and that which had been hard to grasp became evident.
Jesus sought an avenue to every heart. By using a variety of illustrations, He not only presented truth in its different phases, but appealed to the different hearers. Their interest was aroused by figures drawn from the surroundings of their daily life. None who listened to the Saviour could feel that they were neglected or forgotten. The humblest, the most sinful, heard in His teaching a voice that spoke to them in sympathy and tenderness.
And He had another reason for teaching in parables. Among the multitudes that gathered about Him, there were priests and rabbis, scribes and elders, Herodians and rulers, world-loving, bigoted, ambitious men, who desired above all things to find some accusation against Him. Their spies followed His steps day after day, to catch from His lips something that would cause His condemnation, and forever silence the One who seemed to draw the world after Him. The Saviour understood the character of these men, and He presented truth in such a way that they could find nothing by which to bring His case before the Sanhedrim. In parables He rebuked the hypocrisy and wicked works of those who occupied high positions, and in figurative language clothed truth of so cutting a character that had it been spoken in direct denunciation, they would not have listened to His words, and would speedily have put an end to His ministry. But while He evaded the spies, He made truth so clear that error was manifested, and the honest in heart were profited by His lessons.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites. He knew that his disciples would face a difficult and hostile world, where they would confront the recalcitrance of political officials and the intransigence of the protectors of the old order. He knew that they would meet cold and arrogant men whose hearts had been hardened by the long winter of traditionalism. … And he gave them a formula for action, "Be ye therefore as wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." … We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.

Frances Wright photo

“The Virginians are said to pride themselves upon the peculiar tenderness with which they visit the sceptre of authority on their African vassals.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Letter XXVIII (April 1820) Views of Society and Manners in America (1821)
Context: The Virginians are said to pride themselves upon the peculiar tenderness with which they visit the sceptre of authority on their African vassals. As all those acquainted with the character of the Virginia planters, whether American or foreigners, appear to concur in bearing testimony of their humanity, it is probable that they are entitled to the praise which they claim. But in their position, justice should be held superior to humanity; to break the chains would be more generous than to gild them; and whether we consider the interests of the master or the slave, decidedly more useful. To give liberty to a slave before he understands its value is, perhaps, rather to impose a penalty than to bestow a blessing; but it is not clear to me that the southern planters are duly exerting themselves to prepare the way for that change in the condition of their black populations which they profess to think not only desirable but inevitable.

Lucretius photo

“Besides we feel that mind to being comes
Along with body, with body grows and ages.
For just as children totter round about
With frames infirm and tender, so there follows
A weakling wisdom in their minds; and then,
Where years have ripened into robust powers,
Counsel is also greater, more increased
The power of mind; thereafter, where already
The body's shattered by master-powers of eld,
And fallen the frame with its enfeebled powers,
Thought hobbles, tongue wanders, and the mind gives way;
All fails, all's lacking at the selfsame time.
Therefore it suits that even the soul's dissolved,
Like smoke, into the lofty winds of air;
Since we behold the same to being come
Along with body and grow, and, as I've taught,
Crumble and crack, therewith outworn by eld.”

Praeterea gigni pariter cum corpore et una crescere sentimus pariterque senescere mentem. nam vel ut infirmo pueri teneroque vagantur corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenvis. inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus aetas, consilium quoque maius et auctior est animi vis. post ubi iam validis quassatum est viribus aevi corpus et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus, claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua labat mens, omnia deficiunt atque uno tempore desunt. ergo dissolui quoque convenit omnem animai naturam, ceu fumus, in altas aëris auras; quando quidem gigni pariter pariterque videmus crescere et, ut docui, simul aevo fessa fatisci.

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

Book III, lines 445–458 (tr. W. E. Leonard)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Khalil Gibran photo

“There are the men who say, "He preached tenderness and kindliness and filial love, yet He would not heed His mother and His brothers when they sought Him in the streets of Jerusalem."
They do not know that His mother and brothers in their loving fear would have had Him return to the bench of the carpenter, whereas He was opening our eyes to the dawn of a new day.”

Nicodemus The Poet, The Youngest Of The Elders In The Sanhedrim: On Fools And Jugglers
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Context: There are the men who say, "He preached tenderness and kindliness and filial love, yet He would not heed His mother and His brothers when they sought Him in the streets of Jerusalem."
They do not know that His mother and brothers in their loving fear would have had Him return to the bench of the carpenter, whereas He was opening our eyes to the dawn of a new day.
His mother and His brothers would have had Him live in the shadow of death, but He Himself was challenging death upon yonder hill that He might live in our sleepless memory.

P. J. O'Rourke photo

“No government proposal more complicated than "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" ever works.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

Roast of Robert Novak at the Conservative Political Action Committee (11 February 1994)

Max Müller photo

“He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one.”

Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist

Preface (Scribner edition, 1872) <!-- New York, Scribner p xx -->
Chips from a German Workshop (1866)
Context: He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather challenge it for the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would for the good ship to which he trusts his own life, and the lives of those who are dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahmin, or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu.

Johan Falkberget photo

“Lisbeth was his — she was his . . . the words became a beautiful and tender hymn glorifying a love which triumphed over all worldly vicissitudes. The hymn resounded over all the plains, over the ice and snows.”

Johan Falkberget (1879–1967) Norwegian politician

Lisbeth of Jarnfjeld (1930), p. 52
Context: Lisbeth was his — she was his... the words became a beautiful and tender hymn glorifying a love which triumphed over all worldly vicissitudes. The hymn resounded over all the plains, over the ice and snows. In the name of Christ Jesus, he raised the chalice to Bjorn's mouth. In the name of Christ Jesus!

John Keats photo
John Keats photo
Marlene Dietrich photo

“Without tenderness, a man is uninteresting.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer
Jan Mankes photo

“You know the tender side of my work. That side was always dominating me. I feel the joy of that tenderness most strongly when I think of a finch-nest with cobweb and lichen on a May-morning.”

Jan Mankes (1889–1920) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Jan Mankes, in het Nederlands:) Je kent de teedere kant van mijn werk. Die kant heeft me steeds overheerscht. Ik voel de blijdschap om dat teedere het sterkst als ik aan een vinkennest denk, met spinrag en korstmos op een mei-ochtend.
Quote, in a writing to his wife Anne, Nov. 1919, in Jan Mankes - kunstbeschouwingen van Albert Plasschaert & Just Havelaar; publisher J.A.A.M. van Es, Wassenaar, 1927; as cited by Susan van den Berg, in 'Tableau Fine Arts Magazine', 29e Jaargang, nummer 1, Feb/March 2007, p. 78
1915 - 1920

Maximilien Robespierre photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Charles Darwin photo

“As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually through public opinion.”

volume I, chapter III: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals — continued", pages 100-101 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=113&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Bhimsen Joshi photo
Heath Ledger photo

“Please respect our need to grieve privately. My heart is broken. I am the mother of the most tender-hearted, high-spirited, beautiful little girl who is the spitting image of her father. All that I can cling to is his presence inside her that reveals itself every day. His family and I watch Matilda as she whispers to trees, hugs animals, and takes steps two at a time, and we know that he is with us still. She will be brought up with the best memories of him.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

[Michelle Williams: Heath Ledger Has Broken My Heart, http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23147754-5001021,00.html, The Daily Telegraph, Web, news.com.au, February 1, 2008, 2008-02-01, http://web.archive.org/web/20080206234312/http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23147754-5001021,00.html, 2008-02-06]</ref>
[Michelle Williams Breaks Silence on Heath's Death, http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20175486,00.html, People, Web, people.com (Time Inc.), February 1, 2008, 2008-02-02]

John Stuart Mill photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo
Imru' al-Qais photo

“Thus the tears flowed down on my breast, remembering days of love;
The tears wetted even my sword-belt, so tender was my love.”

Imru' al-Qais (501–544) Arabic Poet

The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Vol. 5, p. 20
Poetry, Couplets
Source: https://archive.org/details/sacredbooksearly05hornuoft/page/18/mode/2up

Victor Hugo photo

“Dear ruins! Many a year has been closed, many a month, holy and unhallowed, has elapsed, since I exchanged tender vows with their fair inhabitants!”

Labīd (560–661) Sahabah and poet

Translated by C. J. Lyall, quoted in Arabian Poetry, p. 41 https://archive.org/details/arabianpoetryfo00clougoog/page/n127/mode/2up
Couplets

“DESOLATE are the mansions of the fair, the stations in Minia, where they rested, and those where they fixed their abodes! Wild are the hills of Goul, and deserted is the summit of Rijaam.
The canals of Rayaan are destroyed: the remains of them are laid bare and smoothed by the floods, like characters engraved on the solid rocks.
Dear ruins! Many a year has been closed, many a month, holy and unhallowed, has elapsed, since I exchanged tender vows with their fair inhabitants!
The rainy constellations of spring have made their hills green and luxuriant: the drops from the thunder-clouds have drenched them with profuse as well as with gentle showers:
Showers, from every nightly cloud, from every cloud veiling the horizon at day-break, and from every evening cloud, responsive with hoarse murmurs.
Here the wild eringo-plants raise their tops: here the antelopes bring forth their young, by the sides of the valley: and here the ostriches drop their eggs.
The large-eyed wild-cows lie suckling their young, a few days old—their young, who will soon become a herd on the plain.
The torrents have cleared the rubbish, and disclosed the traces of habitations, as the reeds of a writer restore effaced letters in a book;
Or as the black dust, sprinkled over the varied marks on a fair hand, brings to view with a brighter tint the blue stains of woad.
I stood asking news of the ruins concerning their lovely habitants; but what avail my questions to dreary rocks, who answer them only by their echo?”

Labīd (560–661) Sahabah and poet

Translated by C. J. Lyall, quoted in Arabian Poetry, p. 41-42. First Stanza, lines 1-10 https://archive.org/details/arabianpoetryfo00clougoog/page/n127/mode/2up
The Poem of Labīd (translated by C. J. Lyall in 1881)

Majid al-Muhandis photo

“I like any man, I need tenderness and family warmth.”

Majid al-Muhandis (1971) Iraqi-Saudi Arabian singer

aljarida.com, Oct 9, 2007 https://www.aljarida.com/articles/1461355687919864700/

Wajid Ali Shah photo

“Shedding tears we spend the night in this deepening dark,
Our day is but a long struggle against an uphill path,
Not a single moment goes when we don't bewail our lot,
Lo! we cast a lingering look on these doors and walls.
Fare thee well, my countrymen, we are going afar!
We wish you well, O friends, leave you to His care,
And entrust our Qaiser Bagh to the blowing air,
While we give our tender heart to terror and despair.
Fare thee well, my countrymen, we are going afar!
I am betrayed by my friends, whom should I excuse?
Except God the gracious, I have no refuge,
I can't escape exile, under any excuse.
Lo, we cast a lingering look on the doors and wells,
Fare thee well, my countrymen, we are going afar!
I have been told this much too, ah! the scourage of time!
The servant calls his master 'mad,' a travesty of the mind.
As for me, I cannoy help, but rot in alien climes.
Lo, we cast a lingering look on these doors and walls,
Fare thee well, my countrymen, we are gong afar!
This is the cause of my regret, to whom should I complain?
What wondrous goods of mine are subjected to disdain,
My exile has raised a storm in the whole domain.
Lo we cast a lingering look on the doors and walls,
Fare thee well, my countrymen, we are going afar!
You cannot help but suffer, O heart, the sharp strings of grief,
They didn't spare even the things essential for the mourning meets,
In the scorching summer heat, I've no cover or sheet.
Akhtar now departs from all his friends and mates,
There is little time or need to dwell upon my fate,
Save, O God, my countrymen from the dangers lying in wait!
Lo, we cast a lingering look on these doors and walls,
Fare thee well, my countrymen, we are going afar!”

Wajid Ali Shah (1822–1887) Nawab of Awadh

Masterpieces of Patriotic Urdu Poetry, p. 63-67
Poetry

Patañjali photo

“The peace of the chitta (or mind stuff) can be brought about through the practice of sympathy, tenderness, steadiness of purpose, and dispassion in regard to pleasure or pain, or towards all forms of good or evil.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect : a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

Alice A. Bailey photo

“The peace of the chitta (or mind stuff) can be brought about through the practice of sympathy, tenderness, steadiness of purpose, and dispassion in regard to pleasure or pain, or towards all forms of good or evil.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary (1927)

Kakuzo Okakura photo
Dorothy Thompson photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Pema Chödron photo

“The experience of a sad and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness.”

Pema Chödron (1936) American philosopher

How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind (2008)

Opal Tometi photo

“And so my belief and my view of these protests is that they are different because they are marked by a period that has been deeply personal to millions of Americans and residents of the United States, and that has them more tender or sensitive to what is going on.”

Opal Tometi (1984) Nigerian–American writer, strategist and community organizer

A Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Explains Why This Time Is Different, By Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, (3 June 2020)

Mario Aurelio Poli photo

“Make your hearts tender so that the grace the God of life abundantly grants us will drench you, and you will experience his salvation. Make your hearts tender so that you will not be indifferent to the pain or suffering of anyone.”

Mario Aurelio Poli (1947) Catholic Cardinal from Argentine.

Cardinal calls on faithful to have tender hearts during Lent https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/29155/cardinal-calls-on-faithful-to-have-tender-hearts-during-lent (5 March 2014)

Mateo Alemán photo
Namwali Serpell photo

“I probably seem quite at ease now saying I’m mixed race, I’m black, I’m Zambian, but for a while that was quite torturous, quite angsty. As a young woman I wasn’t very tender or nice to myself…Now I’m older, I’m much more able to be tender and kind to the younger me that I see in the book.”

Namwali Serpell (1980) Zambian feminist academic and writer

Source: On coming to terms with her mixed race identity in “Namwali Serpell: 'As a young woman I wasn’t very nice to myself'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/30/namwali-serpell-the-old-drift-interview in The Guardian (2019 Apr 30)