Giving Quotes (page 118)
I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they coul? that your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of master for the more tender and endearing one of friend.
Abigail Adams
THE MISCHIEVOUS DOGThere was once a Dog who used to snap at people and bite them without any provocation, and who was a great nuisance to every one who came to his master's house. So his master fastened a bell round his neck to warn people of his presence. The Dog was very proud of the bell, and strutted about tinkling it with immense satisfaction. But an old dog came up to him and said, "The fewer airs you give yourself the better, my friend. You don't think, do you, that your bell was given...
Aesop
[The Devil] And me? I suffer, and still I do not live. I am an x in an indeterminate equation. I am some sort of ghost of life who has lost all ends and beginnings, and I've finally even forgotten what to call myself...You're eternally angry, you want reason only, but I will repeat to you once more that I would give all of that life beyond the stars, all ranks and honors, only to be incarnated in the soul of a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound merchant's wife and light candles to God.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I gave, at first, attention close; Then interest warm ensued; From interest, as improvement rose, Succeeded gratitude. 'Obedience was no effort soon, And labour was no pain; If tired, a word, a glance alone Would give me strength again. 'From others of the studious band Ere long he singled me, But only by more close demand And sterner urgency. 'The task he from another took, From me he did reject; He would no slight omission brook And suffer no defect. 'If my companions went astray, He scarce...
Charlotte Bronte
A symbolic unity formed by the languor of the fluids, by the darkening of the animal spirits and the shadowy twilight they spread over the images of things, by the viscosity of the blood that laboriously trickles through the vessels, by the thickening of vapors that have become blackish, deleterious, and acrid, by visceral functions that have become slow and somehow slimy-this unity, more a product of sensibility than of thought or theory, gives melancholia its characteristic stamp.
Michel Foucault
I have sometimes dreamt ... that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards -- their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble -- the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.
Virginia Woolf
If human beings are all monsters, why should I sacrifice anything for them?"Because they are beautiful monsters..., And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.
Orson Scott Card
Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, revelling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.
Bell Hooks