Obviously, where art has it over life is in the matter of editing. Life can be seen to suffer from a drastic lack of editing. It s...tops too quick, or else it goes on too long. Worse, its pacing is erratic. Some chapters are little more than a few sentences in length, while others stretch into volumes. Life, for all its raw talent, has little sense of structure. It creates amazing textures, but it can't be counted on for snappy beginnings or good endings either. Indeed, in many cases no ending is provided at all. The kind of work that Maxwell Perkins did for Thomas Wolfe, or more recently, that Verna Fields did for Stephen Spielberg, doesn't get done in life. Even in a literary age like the nineteenth century it never occurred to anyone to posit God as Editor, useful as the metaphor might have been.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The fact that women in the home have shut themselves away from the thought and life of the world has done much to retard progress.... We fill the world with the children of 20th century A.D. fathers and 20th century B.C. mothers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or "broken heart," is excuse for cutting off one's life while a...ny power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the mother of the race is free, we shall have a better world, by the easy right of birth and by the calm, slow, friendly forc...es of evolution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Architecture might be more sportive and varied if every man built his own house, but it would not be the art and science that we h...ave made it; and while every woman prepares food for her own family, cooking can never rise beyond the level of the amateur's work.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty.... From her work, loved and honored th...ough it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... as women become free, economic, social factors, so becomes possible the full social combination of individuals in collective i...ndustry. With such freedom, such independence, such wider union, becomes possible also a union between man and woman such as the world has long dreamed of in vain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To the young man confronting life the world lies wide. Such powers as he had he may use, must use.... What he wants to be, he may ...strive to be. What he wants to get, he may strive to get. Wealth, power, social distinction, fame,--what he wants he can try for. To the young woman confronting life there is the same world beyond, there are the same human energies and human desires and ambitions within. But all that she may wish to have, all that she may wish to do, must come through a single channel and a single choice. Wealth, power, social distinction, fame,--not only these, but home and happiness, reputation, ease and pleasure, her bread and butter,--all, must come to her through a small gold ring.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »