The tender flower that lifts its head, elate,
Helpless must fall before the blasts of fate,
Sunk on the earth, defaced its lovely form,
Unless your shelter ward th' impending storm. [ Burns ]

Unhappy he! who from the first of joys.
Society, cut off, is left alone
Amid this world of death. Day after day.
Sad on the jutting eminence he sits,
And views the main that ever toils below;
Still fondly forming in the farthest verge,
Where the round ether mixes with the wave.
Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds;
At evening, to the setting sun he turns
A mournful eye, and down his dying heart
Sinks helpless. [ Thomson ]

A man is helpless and unsafe up to the measure of his ignorance. [ M. F. Tupper ]

Rarely they rise by virtue's aid who lie plunged in the depth of helpless poverty. [ Juvenal ]

I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men. [ Emerson ]

What is more pleasing than the sight of the affectionate mother, watching with untiring devotion over her helpless child? Who can contemplate her devotion to the object of her love, enduring his waywardness, forgiving his faults, relieving his pains, and enjojdng his pleasures; pouring incessantly into his opening soul the mature wisdom of her counsels, and following him with her untiring prayers, as he finally goes forth to battle with the temptations and trials of life, without feeling that the true mother's heart is the noblest of heaven's gifts? [ H. Winslow ]