This collection of vulnerability quotes will not only reveal the beauty of openness but also inspire resilience in the face of life’s challenges.
My Top Picks Of Vulnerability Quotes
1. “What happens when people open their hearts?”
“They get better.” ― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
2. “He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.” ― Madeline Miller, Circe
3. “The loner who looks fabulous is one of the most vulnerable loners of all.” ― Anneli Rufus, Party of One
4. “We are at our most powerful the moment we no longer need to be powerful.” ― Eric Micha’el Leventhal
5. “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” ― Brene Brown
6. “We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone – but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.” ― Frank Crane
7. “Emotional pain cannot kill you, but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let yourself heal.” ― Vironika Tugaleva
8. “You can change the world again, instead of protecting yourself from it.” ― Julien Smith, The Flinch
9. “…and that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.” ― Audre Lorde
10. “To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.” ― Criss Jami
Inspiring Quotes On Vulnerability
1. “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weaknesses.” ― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
See also: 210 Best Quotes About Courage To Unleash Your Inner Hero
2. “When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.” ― Madeleine L’Engle
3. “I only share when I have no unmet needs that I’m trying to fill. I firmly believe that being vulnerable with a larger audience is only a good idea if the healing is tied to the sharing, not to the expectations I might have for the response I get.” ― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
4. “It’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there, it’s very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers and the creators. They are the magic people of the world.” ― Amy Poehler, Yes Please
5. “Because he could not afford to fail, he could not afford to trust.” ― Joseph Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington
6. “Spirituality emerged as a fundamental guidepost in Wholeheartedness. Not religiosity but the deeply held belief that we are inextricably connected to one another by a force greater than ourselves–a force grounded in love and compassion. For some of us that’s God, for others it’s nature, art, or even human soulfulness. I believe that owning our worthiness is the act of acknowledging that we are sacred. Perhaps embracing vulnerability and overcoming numbing is ultimately about the care and feeding of our spirits.” ― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
7. “The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.” ― David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
See also: 210 Connection Quotes About Uniting Everything Together
8. “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.” ― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
9. “No one sees your strength, do they? No one sees the silent battle you fight against your overprotective mind that’s trying to keep you safe from harm by keeping you safe from risk, safe from connection, safe from honesty. Maybe others don’t see, but you see it sometimes, don’t you? In the mirror, in those eyes, begging for someone to notice. You have noticed. It is real. You are strong. You are fighting for something incredible. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise—especially not your thoughts.” ― Vironika Tugaleva
10. “Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s being all in.” ― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
11. “Vulnerability really means to be strong and secure enough within yourself that you are able to walk outside without your armor on. You are able to show up in life as just you. That is genuine strength and courage. Armor may look tough, but all it does is mask insecurity and fear.” ― Alaric Hutchinson, Living Peace: Essential Teachings For Enriching Life
12. “When in the presence of someone with whom you have a bond, and to whom you have entrusted your feelings, it is hard to lie and get away with it. The truth just wants to come flowing out. This is especially the case when you are trying to hide your sadness or vulnerability. It is much easier to conceal sadness from a stranger, or from someone you don’t trust.” ― Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Café
13. “I honestly do not know if love vanquishes death as our traditional faiths teach but I do know that our vulnerabilities trump our ideologies and that love leavens the purity and logic of our beliefs propelling us to connect as the fiercely gracious human beings we are.” ― Irwin Kula
14. “Open hearts need tender care” ― Yung Pueblo
15. “Vulnerability is for the brave.” ― Lidia Longorio, Hey Humanity
16. “Our mutual vulnerability is our greatest strength,
Across all insecurity let us be vulnerable together.
In hopelessness we are each other’s compass,
In vulnerability we are each other’s vigor.” ― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo
17. “True intimacy comes from vulnerability, and vulnerability comes from authenticity.” ― Vanessa Ooms, Do It For You: How to Stop People-Pleasing and Find Peace
18. “Vulnerability is essential to spiritual and creative growth. Finding enormous strength through vulnerability. You’re being open to whatever happens, including failure and shame. The two are connected, maybe – vulnerability and freedom.” ― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage
19. “The amount of pain we can endure is spectacular. We are conditioned to withstand torture, to haul gray boulders of hurt on our shoulders, to confront the pressure endlessly, the heavy rough stone wearing away at us until our skin breaks open, revealing the bloody red flesh below.” ― Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe
20. “Vulnerability is your opportunity to influence.” ― Ethan Alison
21. “There is so much hidden beneath the surface of calm water;
hidden secrets and buried treasure.
But we cannot heal what we keep hidden.
When we become quiet and stop listening to the stories we have told ourselves, and instead seek shelter in our wisdom, when we are willing to risk being vulnerable, open and authentic we can start to imagine the new stories waiting to be written.” ― Rebecca L. Brown, Shelter from Our Secrets, Silence, and Shame: How Our Stories Can Keep Us Stuck or Set Us Free
22. “Babies are naturally exhibitionistic and they love exposing their naked bodies. However, they eventually learn that only a few people should be allowed to see them naked. Similarly, as adults, we must also learn to be emotionally naked with just a few trusted people, not everyone.” ― Jermaine Thomas, PsyD, The Examined Life: A Journal of Questions and Quotes
23. “Drafting women will not grant us victories. It will garner short-term applause from the woke crowd. Then it will leave the generation that follows vulnerable, inept, and weak.” ― Jessica Marie Baumgartner
24. “Every single person deals with their own special trauma—there is no hierarchy of pain that makes one’s suffering superior to that of others. We work from our own baselines, moving up in our understanding of how it all fits together.” ― Ranjani Rao, Rewriting My Happily Ever After – A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery
25. “Vulnerability is strength.” ― Chidi Ejeagba
26. “The choice to be oneself requires courage and vulnerability as you put yourself out there for the world to judge and cast aspersion on you. It is far easier to copy others and risk standing out, but that path leads to unhappiness as you say No to yourself and Yes to others. I chose to be authentic, to be real and to know that I do not let the opinions of others define who I am or limit my greatness.” ― Sope Agbelusi
27. “It is fine to share your vulnerability with people around you. Perhaps not with everyone. But with those to whom you really matter. There is no loss of face there. Because when you show people how vulnerable you are, you allow for their kindness, their selflessness, their love, to flow in.” ― AVIS Viswanathan
28. “I do think that it is hard for me to share myself with everyone. My introspection and queer thoughts always make me feel no one will understand – except someone I love. When I love someone, I make myself increasingly vulnerable to them – and give them the power to hurt me by letting them know my sensitive spots” ― Sylvia Plath, The Awakening
29. “Given that narcissists can often be quite vulnerable, again, because their self-esteem is so fragile and reliant on the judgments of other people, depression is not a surprising part of this picture. At times when they are depressed, especially for men, it is quite possible that their mood will be even more irritable than usual, or they will become more withdrawn, and seemingly more focused on themselves. The big-ticket symptoms we would like to see changed—the lack of empathy, the chronic entitlement, the grandiosity—tend to be most resistant to change, since they are linked so strongly to the core deficits of the disorder, such as an inability to regulate self-esteem.” ― Ramani Durvasula, Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist
See also: 190 Focus Quotes To Help You Stay On The Right Target
30. “Healing requires you to be vulnerable and strong at the same time.” ― Brittany Burgunder
Meaningful Vulnerability Quotes
1. “That’s the thing about being a victim; you start to think it’ll happen to you on a regular basis. It’s living with the reality of your own vulnerability, and it sucks.” ― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War
2. “She recognized that that is how friendships begin: one person reveals a moment of strangeness, and the other person decides just to listen and not exploit it.” ― Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings
See also: 150 Living In This Moment Quotes To Embrace The Here & Now
3. “No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to us because they believe in our capacity to know our darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them.” ― Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage
4. “Sometimes divulging your vulnerabilities without any kind of filter can make you more human, but then again, it can also provide material that can be used against you.” ― Tonya Hurley, Lovesick
5. “Sometimes we must yield control to others and accept our vulnerability so we can be healed.” ― Kathy Magliato, Healing Hearts: A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon
6. “Human beings, whatever their backgrounds, are more open than we think, that their behavior cannot be confidently predicted from their past, that we are all creatures vulnerable to new thoughts, new attitudes.
And while such vulnerability creates all sorts of possibilities, both good and bad, its very existence is exciting. It means that no human being should be written off, no change in thinking deemed impossible.” ― Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
7. “We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.
Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weaknesses.” ― Brene Brown
8. “You want to think you’re not like other women, but you are, you know. You’re still… that’s still how the rest of the world, how men are going to see you. Like, I know you hate labels, but you like… You live in a woman’s body. You’re vulnerable. No matter what you think, you’re vulnerable…” ― Eliza Clark, Boy Parts
9. “You can’t find intimacy—you can’t find home—when you’re always hiding behind masks. Intimacy requires a certain level of vulnerability. It requires a certain level of you exposing your fragmented, contradictory self to someone else. You run the risk of having your core self rejected and hurt and misunderstood.” ― Junot Díaz
10. “Some people should not be allowed to see beyond your surface. Seeing your vulnerability is a privilege, not meant for everyone.” ― Yasmin Mogahed
11. “Leaving out appraisal also would render the biological description of the phenomena of emotion vulnerable to the caricature that emotions without an appraisal phase are meaningless events. It would be more difficult to see how beautiful and amazingly intelligent emotions can be, and how powerfully they can solve problems for us.” ― Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
12. “(A)t least simulated vulnerability is bearable/for those/who cannot/withstand unreasonable tenderness.” ― Chelsey Minnis, Zirconia
13. “Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.” ― Rebecca West, The Harsh Voice
14. “Why is female vulnerability still only acceptable when it’s neuroticised and personal; when it feeds back on itself? Why do people still not get it when we handle vulnerability like philosophy, at some remove?” ― Chris Kraus, I Love Dick
15. “People can be at their most vulnerable, but still tenacious at the same time.” ― Toni Bernhard
16. “Take any emotion—love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions—if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.
“But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.” ― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
17. “Vulnerability is the biggest attraction to all predators. But your survival instincts are also at the highest when in danger. Use them, don’t let fear shut them down.” ― Mitta Xinindlu
18. “Yes, we are totally exposed when we are vulnerable. Yes, we are in the torture chamber that we call uncertainty. And, yes, we’re taking a huge emotional risk when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. But there’s not equation where taking risks, braving uncertainty, and opening up ourselves to emotional exposure equals weakness.” ― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
19. “Vulnerability and honesty go together. I have little time for people who don’t have the capacity for either. You never get anywhere with them.” ― Donna Goddard, Nanima: Spiritual Fiction
See also: 120 How Time Flies Quotes To Seize Life’s Fleeting Beauty
20. “Some people exchange comfort for vulnerability. It’s a dangerous transaction.” ― Mitta Xinindlu
21. “Hating is the coward’s way of refusing to be vulnerable.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough
22. “To hack a system requires getting to know its rules better than the people who created it or are running it, and exploiting all the vulnerable distance between how those people had intended the system to work and how it actually works, or could be made to work.” ― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record
23. “When you acknowledge that your vulnerability does not absolve anyone of personal accountability, you will heal from those traumas faster and more fully.” ― Gabrielle Union, You Got Anything Stronger?: Stories
24. “And everything is vulnerable to harm, one way or another. Everybody is vulnerable. It’s kind of horrible when you think about it. All that breakage, without so much as an intention behind it half the time. All that tantalizing fragility.” ― Marilynne Robinson, Jack
25. “Always err on the side of vulnerability, because vulnerability creates more trust, not less.” ― Ryan Stevenson, Eye of the Storm: Experiencing God When You Can’t See Him
26. “Vulnerability is beautiful and honest, they said. It’s being strong, some said. I am, a walking open wound, my ego said. I am…, my soul said. I’ll keep you safe, the divine said. ” ― J.S. Wolfe, The Unfolding: A Journey of Involution
27. “Maybe that’s what intimacy was… A sense of dread at what could go wrong, a stifling of fear, a baring of the vulnerable self to the judgment of someone else. The jagged edge of one soul meeting another, tearing and rending, a connection and a diminishment both. All that imperfection, all that friction – it
wore down the tread, expanding rather than preserving.” ― Gregg Hurwitz, Prodigal Son
See also: 140 Soulmate Quotes Capturing The Essence Of True Love
28. “Stop thinking there’s something wrong with you. Stop smothering your sensitivity and vulnerability. Start to acknowledge and honor your feelings. Once you look at life through a different lens, your life will never be quite the same again.” ― Dee Waldeck
29. “I realized, then, that love could be a threat. That the basic foundation for romance is knowing that the other could destory you at any moment, yet trusting that they won’t. Mutually Assured Destruction.” ― Genki Ferguson, Satellite Love
30. “the most
gorgeous thing
on
a human being.
vulnerability.” ― Nayyirah Waheed, Salt
The Power Of Vulnerability Quotes
1. “Exercise the power of vulnerability. When you are vulnerable you are signaling to your system that the past is over and done! That you’re no longer a victim!” ― Stefan Molyneux
2. “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” ― Brene Brown
3. “Vulnerability is the only authentic state. Being vulnerable means being open, for wounding, but also for pleasure. Being open to the wounds of life means also being open to the bounty and beauty. Don’t mask or deny your vulnerability: it is your greatest asset. Be vulnerable: quake and shake in your boots with it. the new goodness that is coming to you, in the form of people, situations, and things can only come to you when you are vulnerable, i.e. open.” ― Stephen Russell, Barefoot Doctor’s Guide to the Tao: A Spiritual Handbook for the Urban Warrior
4. “One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.” ― Shannon L. Alder
See also: 100 Being Alone Quotes To Embrace The Beauty Of Solitude
5. “Vulnerability means it’s over, it’s done. The war is over but, if you continue to use the same defenses that you had in the past all you’re telling your whole body is that the past is not over.” ― Stefan Molyneux
6. Be vulnerable. Be honest. Be open and show your heart. That’s the best way of telling your heart that the tigers are no longer in the grass. I’m telling you, just take it for a spin. Vulnerability and openness will get you what you want in your life and hiding will only get you the feeling of being prey from here until the end of your life.” ― Stefan Molyneux
7. “There can be few situations more fearful than breaking down in darkness on the highway leading to Casablanca. I have rarely felt quite so vulnerable or alone.” ― Tahir Shah, In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams
8. “Vulnerability is our relationship to our weaknesses, not our weaknesses themselves.
It’s the feeling we have when confronted with our imperfections. The image of being vulnerable is that of taking off our armor, making ourselves available to be intimate, to be touchable. To own your vulnerabilities is a move of trust, a move of solidarity.” ― Scott Erickson, Say Yes: Discover the Surprising Life Beyond the Death of a Dream
9. “Showing up in our own story—being present with it and embracing our mission—takes courage. It’s a ride to be enjoyed and
not feared, and it requires dancing at our edges and taking risks to step out of our comfort zone. Often, we’re brought to our knees before
we’re truly able to rise above the limitations and expectations we’ve accepted from others. It’s a journey—one that is for the warrior—
not for the ego-driven coward who is merely looking for accolades. Humility and vulnerability are a must.” ― Kathy Sparrow, Ignite Your Leadership: Proven Tools for Leaders to Energize Teams, Fuel Momentum and Accelerate Results
See also: 220 Best Enjoy Life Quotes To Unlock The Art Of Living
10. “The limitless’ is the infinite well of inspiration… of passion, creativity, desirability, vulnerability, and love.” ― Lebo Grand
11. “Sometimes it’s difficult to talk about things that hurt you. Sometimes talking doesn’t make you feel better, it just makes it feel more real.” ― Shireen Ayache, Card of Truth
12. “Very unlikely people, you know, will share confidence with each other if they think the other person understands. A prisoner who won’t tell a guard anything will thaw immediately if he’s put in a cell with another man for the same crime. And doctors who would bite off their own tongues before showing indecision to a patient will tell another doctor about how little they know and how frightened they are. I’ve seen it happen many times. It’s how spies work.” ― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone
13. “The stronger, greater, and more successful a person becomes, the more vulnerable and susceptible to moral failures. It comes with the territory, the higher grounds are also more visible and the target even from far.” ― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua
14. “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen in our true self.
So many of us think vulnerability is weakness. This is a very dangerous myth.
Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.
“When you are weak, say you are weak”
If we are going to find our way back to each other, vulnerability will be our most authentic path.” ― Chidi Ejeagba
15. “He is very wise, but he is also very vulnerable. Perhaps he is wise because he is vulnerable?” ― Richard Osman, The Man Who Died Twice
16. “People always think we look for love at our lowest to distract us. I am convinced we do it because we want someone to look us in the eye, to look our ugly in the eye and still choose us. I didn’t want a distraction, I wanted you to see a mess and still find me worthy of love, to tell me that you could still love me anyway.” ― Georges Bataille, The Dead Man
17. “You’re terrified of vulnerability. This is so both because others have been unkind to you in the past, and because you don’t like yourself and are sure anyone who gets close will agree. That’s what makes people afraid to offer you intimacy. They know you’ll reject it. You broke up with the love of your life because you saw how much power they had to hurt you.” ― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times
18. “You’re vulnerable even though you try to conceal it. You stay true to yourself despite what haunts you. I may not specifically know what haunts you but there is a beauty in you.” ― David Grinnell, Ashes
19. “I desire peace, but dread to face the shadows in order to find it. Vulnerability is difficult. It’s as fragile as shards. It takes forever to piece back together but only seconds to destroy.” ― David Grinnell, Ashes
20. “Love is fierce that can be expressed in vulnerability, love is powerful that can open up in fragility…..” ― Jayita Bhattacharjee
Quotes About Being Vulnerable
1. “If you let them see your heart, do not complain when they tear it apart.” ― Ella Fields, A King so Cold
2. “It does good to no woman to be flattered [by a man] who does not intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatuus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
3. “He had tenderness in his heart — ‘a soft place,’ as Nicholas Higgins called it; but he had some pride in concealing it; he kept it very sacred and safe, and was jealous of every circumstance that tried to gain admission. But if he dreaded exposure of his tenderness, he was equally desirous that all men should recognize his justice; and he felt that he had been unjust, in giving so scornful a hearing to anyone who had waited, with humble patience, for five hours, to speak to him.” ― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
4. “If we’re wrapping ourselves up to conceal any vulnerability, whatever happens to us has to go through all those extra layers. Sometimes love doesn’t even reach where we truly live.” ― Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence
5. “The tendency to trust anyone easily gives way to a certain vulnerability.” ― Angelica Hopes, Landscapes of a Heart, Whispers of a Soul
6. “Unknowingly, he prepared me to survive the rest of my days with the way he shielded himself from emotional vulnerabilities that slowly destroy the rest of us.” ― Crystal Woods, Write like no one is reading
7. “Vulnerable, like all men, to the temptations of arrogance, of which intellectual pride is the worst, he [the scientist] must nevertheless remain sincere and modest, if only because his studies constantly bring home to him that, compared with the gigantic aims of science, his own contribution, no matter how important, is only a drop in the ocean of truth.” ― Louis de Broglie, Nouvelles perspectives en microphysique
8. “It doesn’t matter if you come from money or you are poor: If your family has already made you feel that you are not worthy, you begin to believe it, and when someone comes along and tells you that you are beautiful/special/wonderful and showers you with attention and gifts, or offers you money when you desperately need it, you are vulnerable and ready to trust” ― Patti Feuereisen, Invisible Girls: The Truth About Sexual Abuse–A Book for Teen Girls, Young Women, and Everyone Who Cares About Them
9. “…No one ever told her it was okay to make mistakes. No one told her there was nothing wrong with needing help. No one told her it was normal to feel upset, or angry, or overwhelmed now and then. Everyone in her life took her perfectionism for granted and didn’t realize how suffocating it was. And because no one gave the young woman permission to be human, she thought she was a failure for being one.” ― Chris Colfer, Worlds Collide
10. “You have taught me that vulnerability is all. It is where everything stunning and worthwhile happens.” ― Katherine Leyton, Motherlike
11. “They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word.” ― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
12. “What is the line between being vulnerable and prostrating yourself for a system that won’t recognise you? The onus is never on the system to adjust its hardness, it’s on you to shape-shift and acquiesce. Do I use vulnerability as a weapon against this culture? – If you require me to be hard and harder to fight you, I will rebel by being soft like a jelly-beaned being, but like anything, you need to be softer and softer to have the same impact. Do I weaponise my own pain and cause harm to myself by reveling in that pain, nurturing it, putting myself in danger to encourage it and then working it over by verbalizing it for display, to show society, I am a human being and I feel pain just like you.” ― Sheena Patel, I’m a Fan
13. “Vulnerability craves isolation. Desperation weeps in it.” ― Lancali ., I Fell in Love with Hope
14. “When it comes to you choosing you..I hope you choose to be vulnerable…, opening up with real emotions… that share your conquest as well as your failure…your triumph as well as your struggles…” ― Jayita Bhattacharjee
15. “Intimacy doesn’t mean sharing nudity, intimacy means sharing vulnerability.” ― Abhijit Naskar, Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn
16. “It is a terrible thing to be so open: it is as if my heart put on a face and walked into the world” ― Sylvia Plath
17. “To be vulnerable in the twenty-first century is not only to be vulnerable in public but in a way that can be preserved online for eternity. Digital content can be removed from its original context and weaponized.” ― Sarah Kendzior, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent
18. “It was a vulnerable thing; falling for someone when your feelings painted the world around you. Like I was made from glass, and everybody could see inside. No secret safe.” ― Laura C. Reden, Dark Reflections
19. “To fully grasp the extent and peerless importance of the sensory intelligence, sensitivity and vulnerability of the newborn is to change not only our understanding of birth, but of humanity itself.” ― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Apple: Sex, Drugs, Motherhood and the Recovery of the Feminine
20. “To think you know everything about someone is to leave yourself vulnerable to surprise.” ― Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour
21. “Authenticity is the bridge to vulnerability for that is the only way you can begin healing within yourself.” ― Amanda Materre
22. “We need to feel trust to be vulnerable and we need to be vulnerable in order to trust.” ― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
23. “I’m embracing my vulnerability and authentically sharing my truth in the hope that maybe it will help one other person share her truth, and then another, until we have an army of truth tellers ready to stand in love and hope instead of fear and exhaustion.” ― Candy Leigh, Finding Life In Between…A Journal For Me, To You
24. “Get a one-inch by one-inch piece of paper and write down the names of the people whose opinions of you matter … the people on your list should be the people who love you not despite your vulnerability and imperfections, but because of them.” ― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead
25. “Open yourself up to the vulnerability that might meet you in your own reflections.” ― Candy Leigh, Finding Life In Between…A Journal For Me, To You
26. “When you let me see you, you give me permission to be seen.” ― Julieanne O’Connor
27. “I hated being vulnerable, putting myself out there. I hated looking stupid, feeling stupid. I didn’t want to do this. But I had to. I would.” ― Kasie West, Moment of Truth
28. “But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion.” ― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
See also: Complete List Of 150 Inspiring Quotes About Compassion
29. “To them, we are outsiders, Reeve, and nobody is more vulnerable than a person who is other.” ― A.L. Tait, The Fire Star
30. “Embracing our imperfections all comes down to our willingness to be vulnerable, to show our soft underbelly instead of working so hard to hide it.” ― David Taylor-Klaus
Love Vulnerability Quotes
1. “The strongest love is the love that can demonstrate its fragility.” ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
2. “When you love someone, truly love them, you lay your heart open to them. You give them a part of yourself that you give to no one else, and you let them inside a part of you that only they can hurt-you literally hand them the razor with a map of where to cut deepest and most painfully on your heart and soul. And when they do strike, it’s crippling-like having your heart carved out.” ― Sherrilyn Kenyon
3. “Then I made a stupid mistake and looked up at him. His eyes met mine, and for a moment, his face was open and vulnerable in the moonlight. I caught a hint of wonder there as we stared at each other. Slowly, he leaned forward. I caught my breath, a tiny gasp escaping. He stiffened, and his expression shuttered closed, eyes going hard and frosty.
[…] ‘This is getting old,’ he said in a voice that matched his eyes.” ― Julie Kagawa, The Iron King
4. “There is so much hurt in this game of searching for a mate, of testing, trying. And you realize suddenly that you forgot it was a game, and turn away in tears.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
5. “And maybe that was love. Being so vulnerable and allowing someone else in so far they could hurt you, but they also give you everything.” ― Christine Feehan, Water Bound
6. “What was it about relationships that made you feel so vulnerable? Oh, right. A relationship. In any relationship, you put yourself out there. You exposed all of your sensitive nerve endings and your heart and you just had to hope that you trusted the right person.” ― Courtney Cole, Every Last Kiss
7. “In a healthy relationship, vulnerability is wonderful. It leads to increased intimacy and closer bonds. When a healthy person realizes that he or she hurt you, they feel remorse and they make amends. It’s safe to be honest. In an abusive system, vulnerability is dangerous. It’s considered a weakness, which acts as an invitation for more mistreatment. Abusive people feel a surge of power when they discover a weakness. They exploit it, using it to gain more power. Crying or complaining confirms that they’ve poked you in the right spot.” ― Christina Enevoldsen, The Rescued Soul: The Writing Journey for the Healing of Incest and Family Betrayal
8. “Loving someone can be hard at times. You risk a lot when you love – your heart and soul, at the least. Love is the most important and most rewarding investment you can make in another person.” ― J.E.B. Spredemann, A Secret of the Heart
9. “Well, any love makes us vulnerable. Whatever we love will give the gift of pain somewhere along the road. But who would live sealed in spiritual cellophane just to keep from ever being hurt? There are a few people like that. I’m sorry for them. I think they are as good as dead.” ― Gladys Bagg Taber, Harvest at Stillmeadow
10. “Armed I am with love.
Disarmed I am.” ― Manuel Alegre, 30 anos de poesia: obra poética completa
11. “I love you as much as i’m willing to love anybody” ― Taylor Jenkins Reid
12. “It is possible that some may use your vulnerability and rawness against you. Don’t worry much. Just place plan B into motion to combat their actions.” ― Mitta Xinindlu
13. “Loving someone was traumatizing. You never knew what would happen to them out there in the world. Everything precious was also vulnerable.” ― Mary H.K. Choi, Emergency Contact
14. “To put our art, our writing, our photography, our ideas out into the world with no assurance of acceptance or appreciation – that’s also vulnerability. To let ourselves sink into the joyful moments of our lives even though we know that they are fleeting, even though the world tells us not to be too happy lest we invite disaster – that’s an intense form of vulnerability.” ― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
15. “Look for safe people to whom you show your vulnerability and rawness. Not everyone deserves that privilege.” ― Mitta Xinindlu
See also: 150 I Deserve Better Quotes To Remind You Of Your Worth
16. “I don’t know what afflicts me now. Indecisiveness? Reluctance? Fear of being vulnerable? I am not a coward, at least. Fear isn’t equivalent to cowardice. Even a soldier deployed at the border fears bullet, which is exactly why he is able to dodge the enemy and eliminate them.” ― Abhaidev, The World’s Most Frustrated Man
17. “He is as ridiculously beautiful as ever, mouth soft, lips slightly parted, lashes so long that when his eyes are closed they rest against his cheek.
I am used to Cardan’s beauty, but not to any vulnerability. It feels uncomfortable to see him without his fanciful clothes, without his acid tongue and malicious gaze for armour.” ― Holly Black, The Wicked King
18. “But, of course, putting yourself out there takes vulnerability. Vulnerability is hard, and we, as a rule, tend to go for what’s easy; by that logic, closing ourselves off is the easiest thing in the world. We quote the words of others to do our talking for us, send each other links to articles and stories in lieu of actual conversation, post pretty pictures to adequately convey our current state of mind, all to avoid having to proffer a single identifiable human emotion. We keep in touch with relatives by emailing them mawkishly inspirational chain letters once in a while. We regurgitate memes to approximate the feeling of being in the loop.” ― Phil Roland
19. “We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.
Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.
Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.” ― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
20. “There is nothing more beautiful than a vulnerable heart in open hands.” ― Amanda Mosher, Better to be able to love than to be loveable
Quotes About Vulnerability That Are Beautiful
1. “Vulnerability is the hallmark of maturity.” ― Unknown
2. “It’s the hard things that break; soft things don’t break. It was an epiphany I had today and I just wonder why it took me so very, very long to see it! You can waste so many years of your life trying to become something hard in order not to break; but it’s the soft things that can’t break! The hard things are the ones that shatter into a million pieces!” ― C. JoyBell C.
3. “From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew; that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.” ― Ian McEwan, Atonement
4. “Listening is the most dangerous thing of all, listening means knowing, finding out about something and knowing what’s going on, our ears don’t have lids that can instinctively close against the words uttered, they can’t hide from what they sense they’re about to hear, it’s always too late.” ― Javier Marías, A Heart So White
5. “There will come a time when being raw will be the norm. Don’t be embarrassed for being sensitive and vulnerable.” ― Mitta Xinindlu
6. “Being open to correction means making ourselves vulnerable, and many people are not willing to do that.” ― Myles Munroe, Waiting and Dating: A Sensible Guide to a Fulfilling Love Relationship
7. “I have so much respect for the emotionally brave. The ones who put in the emotional work and take the real risks of being vulnerable and removing masks. It’s easy to make chitchat, but it’s hard to speak about what’s really under the surface. It’s easy to joke, but difficult to cry. It’s easy to numb, but hard to feel.
Ironically the real victims of emotional laziness are the people themselves. They end up choosing their emotional comfort zones over happiness. So in the end, they may not be ‘uncomfortable’ anymore; but they are also miserable.” ― Yasmin Mogahed
8. “In the quiet of the night, online friendship speaks the loudest, as we share our stories and bond over our experiences.” ― Medicosaurabh
9. “Being vulnerable, as well as honest, is the key to collective liberation. This is one thing I understand from the principles of disability justice. It is not something that happens overnight after buying a candle, listening to a podcast, or reading a memoir. It requires daily intentions, self-reflections, and support from the people who care about you.” ― Alice Wong
10. “To be human is to be vulnerable.” ― Judy I. Lin, A Venom Dark and Sweet
11. “Embracing the imperfections that you have attracts other people because you become approachable.” ― HUMAIRA SYED, 55 Habits for Mindset Mastery: A Perfect Collection of Everyday Simple HABITS to Change Your Life Forever
12. “The jungle really seems to listen to everything. I’ve never felt so vulnerable. It won’t stop listening, and I don’t know how to tell it that I hate it.” ― Laura Coleman, The Puma Years
13. “You asked me what I liked about baths. I suppose it’s the vulnerability, the sense of comfort one feels. Covered, embraced, when in fact, one is quite exposed.” ― Stéphane Narcisse
14. “Vulnerability begets vulnerability; courage is contagious.” ― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
See also: 200 Powerful Quotes About Transformation To Inspire Change
15. “Love. Family. Vulnerability … Her three weakest points all brewed together to make her feel wholly unlike herself.” ― Delemhach, The House Witch 3
16. “Ordinarily, when we reach out and share ourselves–our fears, hopes, struggles, and joy–we create small sparks of connection. Our shared vulnerability creates light in normally dark places.” ― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
17. “Sometimes it’s in the downward spiral of coming undone where we truly begin to see who we really are. The more we unravel, the closer we get to being free.” ― Kristin Kory, Hungry For Ghosts: Poems
18. “Is this that rare feeling people talk about? Letting yourself be vulnerable despite the fear?” ― Shireen Ayache, Card of Truth
19. “Oversharing? Not vulnerability; I call it floodlighting. … A lot of times we share too much information as a way to protect us from vulnerability, and here’s why.
I’m scared to let you know that I just wrote this article and I’m under total fire for it and people are making fun of me and I’m feeling hurt — the same thing that I told someone in an intimate conversation. So what I do is I floodlight you with it – I don’t know you very well or I’m in front of a big group, or it’s a story that I haven’t processed enough to be sharing with other people – and you immediately respond “hands up; push me away” and I go, “See? No one cares about me. No one gives a s*** that I’m hurting. I knew it.”
It’s how we protect ourselves from vulnerability. We just engage in a behavior that confirms our fear.” ― Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage
20. “A vulnerable leader facilitates the bonds of trust by making herself approachable, likeable, and respectable.” ― John Baldoni, Grace Under Pressure: Leading Through Change and Crisis
Final Word
I hope that you have found the right one among this collection of the best handpicked vulnerability quotes!
May these words resonate in your thoughts, inspiring you to view vulnerability not as a state of fragility but as a center of strength.
Read next: 410 Short Inspirational Quotes For All The Winners Out There
