Physical pain inspires the worst kind of helplessness.

“The suspense: the fearful, acute suspense: of standing idly by while the life of one we dearly love, is trembling in the balance; the…

— Charles Dickens

“You don’t know what it’s like to worry you’ll start to despise the people who help you, the ones you should love, because they’re…

— Tracy Guzeman

To pray is to open the door unto Jesus and admit Him into your distress. Your helplessness is the very thing which opens wide…

— Ole Hallesby

O.K., helplessness is repugnant to me, as a father, as a piece of protoplasm. My parents were activists. I don't believe you can't do…

— Marshall Brickman

“The world was full of forces you couldn't fight against which suddenly loomed up and aimed a crushing blow at you.”

— Tarjei Vesaas

“If you become so frightened of realities that are not your own, if you take upon yourselves tragedies that do not exist in your…

— Seth

Another person is, at the heart of it, unknowable. And if you cannot know a person enough to always guess what they’re capable of,…

— Deb Caletti

“Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

“Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by…

— Arundhati Roy

“Most of those who think their strength is gone and ask for help from others do not know that the strength that seems to…

— Mehmet Murat ildan

“There was no way out; not, at least, in this direction. I was like a hamster that had climbed to the top of the…

— Alan Bradley

“Well, on some level, it’s similar to the psychological phenomenon of helplessness, where the will to try is lost. You get to the point…

— Zack Love

Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual. Reality always creeps…

— Irvin D. Yalom

“What would any man do with a soggy girl who can't assert herself, who has a weak voice, and whose main personality component is…

— Steve Martin

The utter helplessness of a conquered people is perhaps the most tragic feature of a civil war or any other sort of war.

— Rebecca Latimer Felton