Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

Fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart.

There is no tenderness without bravery.

It is going to take a very brave man to love me.

I want to see you game, boys, I want to see you brave and manly, and I also want to see you gentle and tender.

Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.

The challenge of warriorship is to step out of the cocoon, to step out into space, by being brave and at the same time gentle

And there is not anything in the world stronger than tenderness.

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.

There is nothing as strong as tenderness, And nothing as tender as true strength.

The experience of a sad and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness. Conventionally, being fearless means that you are not afraid or that, if someone hits you, you will hit him back. But we aren't talking about that street-fighter level of fearlessness. Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world.

True strength is delicate.

The bravest are the most tender; the loving are the daring.

Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage. Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of love.

I don't think that bravery is about skin. Bravery is about a willingness to show emotional need.

We are built to love. Have the bravery to open the heart you have contracted from life's disappointments. This is how the heroes roll.

Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn't change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.

I think you're the sort of person who finds money on the ground and waves it in the air and asks if anyone has lost it. I think you cry in movies that aren't even sad because you have a soft heart, though you don't let it show. I think you do things that scare you, and that makes you braver than those adrenaline junkies who bungee-jump off bridges.

How much more courage it took to be kind than to be cruel.

The ideal of warriorship is that the warrior should be sad and tender, and because of that, the warrior can be very brave as well.

Courage and compassion are two sides of the same coin. Compassion without courage is not genuine. You may have a compassionate thought or impulse, but if you don’t do or say anything, it’s not real compassion.

The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.

I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences.

It’s important to be fearless yet vulnerable. It takes courage to do both.