...If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testi...mony against them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Children are extraordinarily precious members of society; they are exquisitely alert, sensitive, and conscious of their surroundin...gs; and they are extraordinarily vulnerable to maltreatment or emotional abuse by adults who refuse to give them the profound respect and affection to which they are unconditionally entitled.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels, but in that case there must... be something vital to rebel against and if the elderly stiffly refuse to put up a vigorous front of their own, it leaves the entire situation in a mist.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I was asked to-night why I refuse to have truck with intellectuals after business hours. But of course I won't. 1. I am not an int...ellectual. Two minutes' talk with Aldous Huxley, William Glock, or any of the New Statesman crowd would expose me utterly. 2. I am too tired after my day's work to man the intellectual palisade. 3. When my work is finished I want to eat, drink, smoke, and relax. 4. I don't know very much, but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it. I know what I think about an actor or an actress, and am not interested in what anybody else thinks. My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... suffering does not ennoble. It destroys. To resist destruction, self-hatred, or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw off th...e conditioning of being despised, the fear of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of us--extraordinary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state ...of victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. After all, one reckons, "they" don't want me, "they" accept their own mediocrity and refuse my best, "they" don't deserve me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you ask a member of this generation two simple questions: "How do you want the world to be in fifty years?" and "What do you wa...nt your life to be like five years from now?" the answers are quite often preceded by "Provided there is still a world" and "Provided I am still alive." ... To the often-heard question, Who are they, this new generation? one is tempted to answer, Those who hear the ticking. And to the other question, Who are they who utterly deny them? the answer may well be, Those who do not know, or refuse to face, things as they really are.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and... it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief?... We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be r...eady for anybody who asks her.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The real questions are the ones that obtrude upon your consciousness whether you like it or not, the ones that make your mind star...t vibrating like a jackhammer, the ones that you "come to terms with" only to discover that they are still there. The real questions refuse to be placated. They barge into your life at the times when it seems most important for them to stay away. They are the questions asked most frequently and answered most inadequately, the ones that reveal their true natures slowly, reluctantly, most often against your will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »