Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others--first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enorm...ous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one's own interests and desires. Carried to its "perfection," it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A woman spent all Christmas Day in a telephone box without ringing anyone. If someone comes to phone, she leaves the box, then res...umes her place afterwards. No one calls her either, but from a window in the street, someone watched her all day, no doubt since they had nothing better to do. The Christmas syndrome.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[T]he syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit of palliation. For every symptom that is eased, another is made worse. The ho...rse leech's daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum cannot vary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I always used to suffer a great deal if I let myself get too close to reality since the definitive world of the everyday with its ...hard edges and harsh light did not have enough resonance to echo the demands I made upon experience. It was as if I never experienced experience as experience. Living never lived up to the expectations I had of it--the Bovary syndrome.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A married guy is responsible for everything, no matter what. Women, thanks to their having been oppressed all these years, are bla...meless, free as birds, and all the dirt they do is the result of premenstrual syndrome or postmenstrual stress or menopause or emotional disempowerment by their fathers or low expectations by their teachers or latent unspoken sexual harassment in the workplace, or some other airy excuse. The guy alone is responsible for every day of marriage that is less than marvelous and meaningful.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Strange that I should have no fear of dying? Well, I have lived so long questioning the unknown, that this plunge into its depths ...is only the last and perhaps the greatest of my experiments.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although the stupid, unthinking world may approve what you have done, in your heart you know that, but for your treachery, the boy... you loved would be alive today. If anyone is responsible for his death, you killed him, and for that murder you will live and die in the contempt and loathing of your own heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We gave 'em wings to fly and they rained death on us. We gave 'em a voice to be heard around the world and they preach hatred to p...oison the minds of nations. Even the medicine we gave them to ease their pain is turned into a vice to enslave half mankind for the profit of a few. Ah, Janet, dear, don't you see? Every gift that science has given them has been twisted into a thing of hate and greed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You who have condemned me, I know your kind. Your forebears poisoned Socrates, burned Joan of Arc, hanged, tortured all those whos...e only offense was to bring light into darkness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »