Helpless

Famous quotes containing the word helpless:

    Quintilian [educational writer in Rome about A.D. 100] hoped that teachers would be sensitive to individual differences of temperament and ability. . . . Beating, he thought, was usually unnecessary. A teacher who had made the effort to understand his pupil’s individual needs and character could probably dispense with it: “I will content myself with saying that children are helpless and easily victimized, and that therefore no one should be given unlimited power over them.”
    C. John Sommerville (20th century)

    I am a sort of martyr, as you see,
    A horizontal monument to patience.
    The calves of waitresses parade about
    My helpless head upon this sodden floor.
    Well, I am down again, but not yet out.
    O sweet frustrations, I shall be back for more.
    Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

    The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence.
    Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)