A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture. — Abraham Joshua Heschel
History will judge societies and governments - and their institutions - not by how big they are or how well they serve the rich and the powerful, but by how effectively they respond to the needs of the poor and the helpless. — Cesar Chavez
The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. — Jimmy Carter
I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. It doesn't change God - it changes me. — C. S. Lewis
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. — Rainer Maria Rilke
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that the more helpless a creature the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of humankind. — Mahatma Gandhi
The highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service. The greatest form of praise is the sound of consecrated feet seeking out the lost and helpless. — Billy Graham
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. — B. F. Skinner
Some people left you for dead. They thought it was over. They said you're hopeless, you're helpless. You can't be used. You're not ministry material. You're going to be poor. You're going to be messed up.But guess what?Tell the devil, go to hell. You're a liar. — Paula White
You are never alone or helpless. The force that guides the stars guides you too. — Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar
The future is in our hands. We are not hapless bystanders. We can influence whether we have a planet of peace, social justice, equity, and growth or a planet of unbridgeable differences between peoples, wasted resources, corruption, and terror. — James Wolfensohn
I am hoping for better times. That's how you know us hapless gardeners - by our dirty fingernails and our absurd, unquenchable optimism about next year. — Mary McGrory
The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another. — Samuel Johnson
Twere better to be born a stone Of ruder shape, and feeling none, Than with a tenderness like mine And sensibilities so fine! Ah, hapless wretch! condemn'd to dwell Forever in my native shell, Ordained to move when others please, Not for my own content or ease; But toss'd and buffeted about, Now in the water and now out. — William Cowper
How dreadful it is, to emerge from the oblivion of slumber, and to receive as a good morrow the mute wailing of one's own hapless heart - to return from the land of deceptive dreams to the heavy knowledge of unchanged disaster! — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
O sleepers! what a thing is slumber! Sleep resembles death. Ah, why then dost thou not work in such wise as that after death thou mayst retain a resemblance to perfect life, when, during life, thou art in sleep so like to the hapless dead? — Leonardo da Vinci
I'm sympathetic to the decent and hapless footsoldier into whose lap falls the unenviable duty of carrying out fubar policies. — Rene Balcer
Streets teemed with hell's wretched souls. New dead with their gadgets and old dead from antiquity. Demons roamed the avenues and alleyways, tormenting hapless damned at random with branding irons, flaming pitchforks, and razor-wire whips. -From the story Remember, Remember, Hell in November, in the anthology, Lawyers in Hell. — Larry Atchley Jr.
Mildly talented in a variety of ways but with no genuine ability in any one field, she was like me, the perennial hapless self-amused dilettante, half-worried by the slippage of time but determined to enjoy failure anyway. — Edward Abbey
I believe in the total depravity of inanimate things... the elusiveness of soap, the knottiness of strings, the transitory nature of buttons, the inclination of suspenders to twist and of hooks to forsake their lawful eyes, and cleave only unto the hairs of their hapless owner's head. — Katharine Walker
In the modern day world, where time is premium and battle for subsistence is unimaginably tough, the hapless common man simply gives in and pays the bribe just to get on with life. — Shaffi Mather
The reviewer is a singularly detested enemy because he is, unlike the hapless artist, invulnerable. — Carroll O'Connor
And then there is Pythagoras. The legend is that the founder of theoretical mathematics was so outraged when one of his students, the haplessly gifted Hippasus, discovered irrational numbers that he sent the poor fellow out on a raft to drown, initiating a venerable tradition of professors mistreating their graduate students. — Rebecca Goldstein
After all, [female genital mutilation is] a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, a lot of us hapless western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don't demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest. — Mark Steyn
As I get older, I recognize that my thinking about poetry may or
may not have anything actively to do with my actual work as a
poet. This strikes me as no thing cynically awry but rather
seems again instance of that hapless or possibly happy fact,
we do not as humans seem necessarily aware of what we are
physically or psychically doing at all! — Robert Creeley
The law of karma is neither fatalistic nor punitive; nor is man a hapless, helpless victim in its bonds. God has blessed each one of us with reason, intellect and discrimination, as well as the sovereign free will. Even when our past karma inclines us toward evil, we can consciously tune our inclination towards detachment and ego-free action, thus lightening the karmic load. — Dada Vaswani
I'm still kind of a hapless character in my everyday life. But when it comes to the writing, my influences are very old influences. I love American music of absolutely all stripes, including show tunes, advertising jingles, theme tunes from quiz shows, all kinds of American music. — Nick Lowe
Rosanne Daryl Thomas's tale of her enchantment by bees is a delight to read. It also contains close observations of the natural world, tales of failure and triumph with the hives, and a stellar cast of characters that includes her daughter, their cats, the hapless Farmer Tom, Pete the crossing guard, and, most important, the Bee Master. Every word tastes sweet as honey. — Janet Lembke
Most traditional ghost stories feature rather hapless protagonists, who have nasty things happen to them. — Jonathan Stroud
The embodied self is the same person who woke to the world in a burst of visonary immediacy, who soon found that he was not the center of that world but on the contrary, a dependent and even hapless creature, and who then discovered that he was doomed to die — Roberto Unger
The [travel] writer, looking back at the journey from a distance of a year or two (or three), is a different character from the hapless character who undertook the trip: wise after the event, with the leisure to tease out meanings from the experience that the distracted traveler never had, and often impatient with his alter ego's blinkered and unsatisfactory version of things. — Jonathan Raban
On this hapless earth There 's small sincerity of mirth, And laughter oft is but an art To drown the outcry of the heart. — Hartley Coleridge
Oh, stay, sweet warbling woodlark, stay, Nor quit for me the trembling spray, A hapless lover courts thy lay, Thy soothing, fond complaining. — Robert Burns
Heaven hears and pities hapless men like me, For sacred ev'n to gods is misery. — Homer
Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove The pangs of guilty power and hapless love! Rest here, distress'd by poverty no more; Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before; Sleep undisturb'd within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note like thine! — Samuel Johnson
. . . my pilot pointed to his left front and above, and looking in the direction he pointed, I saw a long dark brown form fairly streaking across the sky. We could see that it was a German machine, and when it got above and behind our middle machine, it dived on it for all the world like a huge hawk on a hapless sparrow. — James McCudden
Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again. — Greg Bear
To be in love- where scorn is bought with groans,
Coy looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading moment's mirth
With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights;
If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;
If lost, why then a grievous labour won;
However, but a folly bought with wit,
Or else a wit by folly vanquished. — William Shakespeare
There are those who condemn five in midfield as a negative tactic, but when a side's centre-backs are as hapless as Chris Perry and Hermann Hreidarsson were on Sunday, it is not nearly negative enough. — Matthew Engel
There were also the razor marks on her wrists and forearms, half a dozen per arm, not very deep, not very convincing really, just a lame, hapless attempt at hurting herself. There hadn't even been that much blood and nobody at the hospital had been at all surprised. These scars, for some reason, he didn't mind. Maybe they even appealed to him. They showed that she was weak and in need of him. — Geoff Nicholson
Sophia shrieked and fainted on the ground – I screamed and instantly ran mad. We remained thus mutually deprived of our senses, some minutes, and on regaining them were deprived of them again. For an Hour and a Quarter did we continue in this unfortunate situation – Sophia fainting every moment and I running mad as often. At length a groan from the hapless Edward (who alone retained any share of life) restored us to ourselves. — Jane Austen
When is the last time you were a tourist?” she asked archly. He just looked at her. Charles, she had to agree, was not tourist material. “Right,” Anna told him. “Buck up. You might even enjoy it.” “You might as well have ‘hapless victim’ tattooed across your forehead,” he muttered. — Patricia Briggs
In Conclusion
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