Zadie Smith Quotes

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.

You don't leave people who can't defend themselves.

The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong.

There is no safety where there is no strength.

Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.

People confuse goodness with weakness. It is weak people, not good people (goodness demands strength), who are taken advantage of.

I don't want to be all power and muscle.

I had been gullible, naive, soft, pliable. That's why I got taken advantage of. To survive, you have to have a tough skin.

Someone who has experienced trauma also has gifts to offer all of us - in their depth, their knowledge of our universal vulnerability, and their experience of the power of compassion.

I have learned to love that which is meant to harm me, so that I can stand in the way of those who are less strong. I can take the bullets for those who aren't able to.

Don’t let them see you weak.

Slavery is a condition imposed upon individuals or races not sufficiently able to protect or defend themselves, and so long as a race or people expose themselves to the danger of being weak, no one can tell when they will be reduced to slavery.

Fear not, we are of the nature of the lion, and cannot descend to the destruction of mice and such small beasts.

I don't worry about people misinterpreting my kindness for weakness.

Take, for example, the African jungle, the home of the cheetah. On whom does the cheetah prey? The old, the sick, the wounded, the weak, the very young, but never the strong. Lesson: If you would not be prey, you had better be strong.

The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Sometimes people don't trust the force of kindness. They think love or compassion or kindness will make you weak and kind of stupid and people will take advantage of you; you won't stand up for other people.

Only the gentle are ever really strong.

Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.

Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away.

Weapons are created to be used. There's no place for the weak on this earth.

Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.

It is indeed hard for the strong to be just to the weak, but acting justly always has its rewards.

Sometimes power is all a person has, so they will protect it even unto their own destruction, for without power they have nothing.