The glance is natural magic. The mysterious communication established across a house between two entire strangers, moves all the s...prings of wonder. The communication by the glance is in the greatest part not subject to the control of the will. It is the bodily symbol of identity with nature. We look into the eyes to know if this other form is another self, and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession what inhabitant is there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity--not necessarily a knowledge of who we are, but a clarification of ...the range of what we might become, a set of self-references by which we can make sense of our responses, and justify our decisions and goals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when t...he stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.... Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The mother whose self-image is dependent on her children places on those children the responsibility for her own identity, and her... involvement in the details of their lives can put great pressure on the children. A child suffers when everything he or she does is extremely important to a parent; this kind of over-involvement can turn even a small problem into a crisis.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Having an identity at work separate from an identity at home means that the work role can help absorb some of the emotional shock ...of domestic distress. Even a mediocre performance at the office can help a person repair self-esteem damaged in domestic battles.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Romantic love, in pornography as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willin...gness to submit to her own annihilation.... The proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Unlike Boswell, whose Journals record a long and unrewarded search for a self, Johnson possessed a formidable one. His life in Lon...don--he arrived twenty-five years earlier than Boswell--turned out to be a long defense of the values of Augustan humanism against the pressures of other possibilities. In contrast to Boswell, Johnson possesses an identity not because he has gone in search of one, but because of his allegiance to a set of assumptions that he regards as objectively true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...I ... know the bitter fact that most lives are incredibly wasted, that opportunities for developing identity, for receiving ple...asure, for achieving a sense of self-worth are limited and, not only underdeveloped, but in most cases not developed at all--because no one thinks that a housewife, or a mother, or a typist has anything to develop.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Promiscuity in men may cheapen love but sharpen thought. Promiscuity in women is illness, a leakage of identity. The promiscuous w...oman is self-contaminated and incapable of clear ideas. She has ruptured the ritual integrity of her body.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Think about the pressure to "pass" by lying about one's age ... that familiar temptation to falsify a condition of one's birth or ...identity and pretend to be part of a more favored group. Fair-skinned blacks invented "passing" as a term, Jews escaping anti-Semitism perfected the art, and the sexual closet continues the punishment, but pretending to be a younger age is probably the most encouraged form of "passing," with the least organized support for "coming out" as one's true generational self.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »