Don't order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple.... Be pa...tient with the poor people who will snivel: they don't know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come natural...ly to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our "natural" attitude toward the "other" is one of either indifference or hostility.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In movies about women, all important historical and natural events are translated into the terms of a woman's daily life. World Wa...r I is not about the Allies versus the Kaiser. It's about how unmarried women become pregnant when they have sex. The Depression is not about an economic collapse. It's about runs in stockings, no money for carfare, and being forced out into the streets. Natural disasters like earthquakes and cholera epidemics are defined by miscarriages and dying children. Everything is couched in terms of what are presumed to be the major events of a woman's life: men, marriage, motherhood, and all the usual "feminine" things. At the same time that big events are made small, personal, small events are made huge.... Thus, the woman's film is a genre that generously empowers a sex that society has relegated to secondary status.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained to me before I can keep on going as a resident member of ...the human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children use when they want to "dress up like daddy."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It would be one of the greatest triumphs of humanity, one of the most tangible liberations from the constraints of nature to which... mankind is subject, if we could succeed in raising the responsible act of procreating children to the level of a deliberate and intentional activity and in freeing it from its entanglement with the necessary satisfaction of a natural need.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quite ...well developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don't think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you'll see what I mean.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts and cultiva...te these. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways to succeed and many, many different abilities that will help you get there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Children are incurable romantics. Brimful of romance and tragedy, we whirl through childhood hopelessly in love with our parents. ...In our epic imagination, we love and are loved with a passion so natural and innocent we may never know its like as adults.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Many people operate under the assumption that since parenting is a natural adult function, we should instinctively know how to do ...it--and do it well. The truth is, effective parenting requires study and practice like any other skilled profession. Who would even consider turning an untrained surgeon loose in an operating room? Yet we "operate" on our children every day.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »