Timely Quotes (page 262)
And no, it wasn't shame I now felt, or guilt, but something rarer in my life and stronger than both: remorse. A feeling which is more complicated, curdled, and primeval. Whose chief characteristic is that nothing can be done about it: too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, for amends to be made.
Julian Barnes
From "Not For Ourselves Alone:"
In Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s time:
Women were barred by custom from the pulpit and professions
Those who spoke in public were thought indecent
Married women were prohibited from owning or inheriting property: in fact, wives were the property of their husbands, who were entitled by law to her wages and her body.
Women were prohibited from signing contracts
Women had no right to their children or even their clothing in a divorce
Women were not allowed to...
Ken Burns
Let me twine. Mine arms about that body, where against. My grained ash an hundred times hath broke And scarr'd the moon with splinters: here I clip. The anvil of my sword, and do contest. As hotly and as nobly with thy love. As ever in ambitious strength I did. Contend against thy valour. Know thou first, I loved the maid I married; never man. Sigh'd truer breath; but that I see thee here, Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart. Than when I first my wedded mistress saw. Bestride my...
William Shakespeare
They feed back exactly what is given them. Because they do not believe in words - words are for "typeheads," Chester Anderson tells them, and a thought which needs words is just one more of those ego trips - their only proficient vocabulary is in the society's platitudes. As it happens I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language, and I am not optimistic about children who will settle for saying, to indicate that their...
Joan Didion
I tell you Charlie, I was there waiting in that field. waiting for Ede and Tom to find me. You don't think two people come together for nothing, do you? They were together because I was waiting to be found..." Then she looked straight into my face and said to me: "You know it, too, Charlie. All that time you waited for me to find you. What if I hadn't? What if I'd said: I won't?" She turned, and clinging to my arm, she surveyed the fields of snow the stretched away to the confining wall.
Timothy Findley