Blaming the boots, not feet
People pin their failings on the nearest outside object rather than on themselves, the way a man blames his boots for the faults of his feet. The tool or circumstance takes the fault so the self can stay blameless.
Odds of salvation invite doubt
When comfort rests on a single account that others fail to confirm, a thinking person has to ask why that one should be believed over the rest. A hopeful story backed by one witness out of four is a gamble, not a certainty, however reasonable the percentage sounds.
Hope deferred keeps you waiting
A promise that always says 'not today, but surely tomorrow' never quite gets broken, so it never releases the people waiting on it. Hope that is put off but never killed keeps them in place, resolving each night to leave and then not moving. Because each day can repeat the last, the waiting has no natural end.
Total subordination destroys the voice
Someone who lives permanently beneath another person's every whim can lose the ability to think or speak for themselves in any way that could change things. Ordered to 'think,' they can only produce a stream of borrowed phrases repeated to no effect.
Companions bicker but cannot part
Two people stuck together keep score, each claiming the other would be a heap of bones without him and that only his own suffering counts. Yet the same person still has no one but the other to tell his private nightmares to, so the quarrelling and the dependence go together.