... 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 »
When I am writing a novel I must actually live the lives of my characters. If, for instance, my hero is a gambler on the French Ri...viera, I must make myself pack up and go to Cannes or Nice, willy-nilly, and there throw myself into the gay life of the gambling set until I really feel that I am Paul De Lacroix, or Ed Whelen, or whatever my hero's name is. Of course this runs into money, and I am quite likely to have to change my ideas about my hero entirely and make him a bum on a tramp steamer working his way back to America, or a young college boy out of funds who lives by his wits until his friends at home send him a hundred and ten dollars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Because we cannot control all that our children see, hear, and play, it is tempting to throw up our hands and do nothing. Although... we cannot do everything, we can do something, and this is to talk with our children and teenagers about unexpected encounters with inappropriate violence, sexuality, and profanity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not strange that some of our revoltes preach trial marriage: for the only safe way to marry them at all would be on trial. U...ntil you had definitely experienced all the human situations with them, you would have no means of knowing how, in any given situation, they would behave. They might conform about evening-dress, and throw plates between courses; they might be charming to your friends, and ask the waiter to sit down and finish dinner with you. Or they might in all things, little and big, be irreproachable. The point is that you would never know.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Those who sit in a glass house do wrong to throw stones about them; besides, the American glass house is rather thin, it will brea...k easily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To shut the door at the end of the workday, which does not spill over into evening. To throw away books after reading them so they... don't have to be dusted. To go through boxes on New Year's Eve and throw out half of what is inside. Sometimes for extravagance to pick a bunch of flowers for the one table. Other women besides me must have this daydream about a carefree life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great passion in a man's life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his mas...culinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life for the sake of that masculinity. He may keep this passion secret from women, and he may even deny it to himself, but the other boys know it about themselves and the wiser ones know it about the rest of us as well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Little has been written about the role of the jane, as I prefer to call the female john, in the life of the contemporary career wo...man.... In some ways it has replaced the old consciousness-raising group as a setting for the free exchange of ideas about men, work, children, personal development, and the ridiculous price of pantyhose. In most offices, it is one of the few spots in which a woman employee can pause, throw back her head, and say, loudly, "Men are so stupid sometimes I want to shoot all of them."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd. Thrice and once the hedge-pig whin'd.... Harper cries: 'Tis time, 'tis time. Round about the cauldron go; In the poison'd entrails throw.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... women are supposed to be unfit to vote because they are hysterical and emotional and of course men would not like to have emot...ion enter into a political campaign. They want to cut out all emotion and so they would like to cut us out. I had heard so much about our emotionalism that I went to the last Democratic national convention, held at Baltimore, to observe the calm repose of the male politicians. I saw some men take a picture of one gentleman whom they wanted elected and it was so big they had to walk sidewise as they carried it forward; they were followed by hundreds of other men screaming and yelling, shouting and singing the "Houn' Dawg".... I saw men jump up on the seats and throw their hats in the air and shout: "What's the matter with Champ Clark?" Then, when those hats came down, other men would kick them back into the air, shouting at the top of their voices: "He's all right!!"... No hysteria about it--just patriotic loyalty, splendid manly devotion to principle. And so they went on and on until 5 o'clock in the morning--the whole night long. I saw men jump up on their seats and jump down again and run around in a ring. I saw two men run towards another man to hug him both at once and they split his coat up the middle of his back and sent him spinning around like a wheel. All this with the perfect poise of the legal male mind in politics! I have been to many women's conventions in my day but I never saw a woman leap up on a chair and take off her bonnet and toss it up in the air and shout: "What's the matter with" somebody. I never saw a woman knock another woman's bonnet off her head as she screamed, "She's all right!".... But we are willing to admit that we are emotional. I have actually seen women stand up and wave their handkerchiefs. I have even seen them take hold of hands and sing, "Blest be the tie that binds." Nobody doubts that women are excitable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »