Alice Duer Miller > Quotes

“People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.”
― Alice Duer Miller

“It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its natural functions by artificial means. Thus we suppress the child's curiosity and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning he is offered special coaching for his scholastic coaching for his scholastic difficulties.”
― Alice Duer Miller

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give values to survival.”
― Alice Duer Miller

“It's hard upon occasions to be forceful and sublime
When you're treated as incompetents three-quarters of the time.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times

“We are not really senseless, and we are not angels, too,
But very human beings, human just as much as you.
It's hard upon occasions to be forceful and sublime
When you're treated as incompetents three-quarters of the time.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times

“People who deal in truth themselves recognize it when they hear it, just as people who deal in diamonds recognize a real stone when they see it.”
― Alice Duer Miller

“Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger, but faces it head on”
― Alice Duer Miller

“If it's painful for you to criticize your friends, you're safe in doing it; if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue.”
― Alice Duer Miller

“Chivalry:

It's treating a woman politely
As long as she isn't a fright:
It's guarding the girls who act rightly,
If you can be judge of what's right;
It's being—not just, but so pleasant;
It's tipping while wages are low;
It's making a beautiful present,
And failing to pay what you owe.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times

“When men in Congress come to blows at somemthing someone said,
I always notice that it shows their blood is quick and red;
But if two women disagree, with very little noise,
It proves, and this seems strange to me, that women have no poise.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times

“People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.”
― Alice Duer Miller

“There, little girl, don't read,
You're fond of your books, I know,
But Brother might mope
If he had no hope
Of getting ahead of you.
It's dull for a boy who cannot lead.
There, little girl, don't read.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times

“am American bred, I have seen much to hate here--much to forgive, But in a world where England is finished and dead, I do not wish to live.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Poem, Five Books: Forsaking All Others / Winds In The Night / Are Women People? / The White Cliffs / Early Poems

“Don't Dare take your college as a matter of course- because like freedom and democracy, many people you'll never know anything about have broken their hearts to get it for you.”
― Alice Duer Miller BC 1889

“Conversation is a partnership, not a relation of master and slave, as most people try to make it.”
― Alice Duer Miller

“The following is a narrative poem. It became a huge success at the time of its publication, and inspired the 1944 movie The White Cliffs of Dover. It is about an American girl who visits London just before the First World War, marries, and stays in England during the succeeding years, including the start of the Second World War.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Poem, Five Books: Forsaking All Others / Winds In The Night / Are Women People? / The White Cliffs / Early Poems

“He was scolding me," replied Mr. Cord. "Have you noticed, Crystal, what a lot of scolding is going on in the world at present? I believe that that is why no one is getting any work done—everyone is so busy scolding everybody else. The politicians are scolding, and the newspapers are scolding, and most of the fellows I know are scolding. I believe I've got hold of a great truth—”
― Alice Duer Miller, 7 NOVELS. Come Out Of The Kitchen!, The Burglar And The Blizzard, Ladies Must Live, The Happiest Time Of Their Lives, The Charm School, The Beauty And ...

“Rebels against her--that stem intractable sense Of that which no man can stomach and still be free, Writing:  "When in the course of human events . . ." Writing it out so all the world could see Whence come the powers of all just governments. The tree of Liberty grew and changed and spread, But the seed was English.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Poem, Five Books: Forsaking All Others / Winds In The Night / Are Women People? / The White Cliffs / Early Poems

“Mother, what is a Feminist?"
"A feminist, my daughter,
Is any woman now who cares
To think about her own affairs
As men don't think she oughter.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times

“It's not their theories I object to, but them themselves. You think if you married Moreton you'd be going into a great new world of idealism. You wouldn't. You'd be going into a world of failure—of the pettiest, most futile quarrels in the world. The chief characteristic of the man who fails is that he always believes it's the other fellow's fault; and they hate the man who differs with them by one per cent more than they hate the man who differs by one hundred. Has there ever been a revolution where they did not persecute their fellow revolutionists worse than they persecuted the old order, or where the new rule wasn't more tyrannical than the old?”
― Alice Duer Miller, 7 NOVELS. Come Out Of The Kitchen!, The Burglar And The Blizzard, Ladies Must Live, The Happiest Time Of Their Lives, The Charm School, The Beauty And ...

“The editor was often called a Bolshevist—as who is not in these days? For language is given us not only to conceal thought, but often to prevent it, and every now and then when the problems of the world become too complex and too vital, some one stops all thought on a subject by inventing a tag, like "witch" in the seventeenth century, or "Bolshevist" in the twentieth. Ben”
― Alice Duer Miller, 7 NOVELS. Come Out Of The Kitchen!, The Burglar And The Blizzard, Ladies Must Live, The Happiest Time Of Their Lives, The Charm School, The Beauty And ...

“Knowing that our happiness Might never come again; I, not forgetting, "Till death us do part," Was outrageously happy With death in my heart. Lovers in peacetime With fifty years to live, Have time to tease and quarrel And question what to give; But lovers in wartime Better understand The fullness of living, With death close at hand.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Poem, Five Books: Forsaking All Others / Winds In The Night / Are Women People? / The White Cliffs / Early Poems

“How old, how commonplace To look upon the face Of your first-born, and glory in your lot. To look upon his face And understand your place Among the unknown dead in churchyards lying, To see the reason why You lived and why you die-- Even to find a certain grace in dying.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Poem, Five Books: Forsaking All Others / Winds In The Night / Are Women People? / The White Cliffs / Early Poems

“The day should be as it was sure to be-- When this was home no more to him--when he Could go there only when his brother's wife Should ask him--to a room not his--his life Would shrink and lose its meaning.  How unjust, I thought.  Why do they feel it must Go to that idle, insolent eldest son? Well, in the end it went to neither one.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Poem, Five Books: Forsaking All Others / Winds In The Night / Are Women People? / The White Cliffs / Early Poems

“Someone beside me turned and smiled, And looking down at me said:  "I fancy You're Bertie's Australian cousin Nancy. He told me to tell you that he'd be late At the Foreign Office, and not to wait Supper for him, but to go with me, And try to behave as if I were he." I should have told him on the spot That I had no cousin--that I was not Australian Nancy--that my name Was Susan Dunne, and that I came From a small white town on a deep-cut bay In the smallest state in the U.S.A. I meant to tell him, but changed my mind-”
― Alice Duer Miller, Poem, Five Books: Forsaking All Others / Winds In The Night / Are Women People? / The White Cliffs / Early Poems

“Facts.  I was taken down to see the place, The family place in Devon--and John's mother. "Of course, you understand," he said, "my brother Will have the place."  He smiled; he was so sure The world was better for primogeniture. And yet he loved that place, as Englishmen”
― Alice Duer Miller, Poem, Five Books: Forsaking All Others / Winds In The Night / Are Women People? / The White Cliffs / Early Poems

“The English are frosty When you're no kith or kin Of theirs, but how they alter When once they take you in! The kindest, the truest, The best friends ever known, It's hard to remember How they froze you to a bone.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Poem, Five Books: Forsaking All Others / Winds In The Night / Are Women People? / The White Cliffs / Early Poems

“Is it true that the English government is calling on women to do work abandoned by men?

Yes, it is true.

Is not a woman's place the home?

No, not when men need her services outside the home.

Will she never be told again that her place is the home?

Oh, yes, indeed.

When?

As soon as men want their jobs back again.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times

“When Johnnie went to France. Such a tame ending To a great romance-- Two lonely women With nothing much to do But get to know each other; She did and I did, too. Mornings at the Rectory, Learning how to roll Bandages, and always Saving light and coal. Oh, that house was bitter As winter closed in, In spite of heavy stockings And woolen next the skin. I was cold and wretched, And never unaware Of John more cold and wretched In a trench out there.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Poem, Five Books: Forsaking All Others / Winds In The Night / Are Women People? / The White Cliffs / Early Poems

“If some immortal strangers walked our land And heard of death, how could they understand That we--doomed creatures--draw our meted breath Light-heartedly--all unconcerned with death. So in these years between the wars did men From happier continents look on us when They brought us sympathy, and saw us stand Like the proverbial ostrich--head in sand-- While youth passed resolutions not to fight, And statesmen muttered everything was right-- Germany, a kindly, much ill-treated nation-- Russia was working out her own salvation Within her borders.  As for Spain, ah, Spain Would buy from England when peace came again! I listened and believed--believed through sheer Terror.  I could not look whither my fear Pointed--that agony that I had known. I closed my eyes, and was not alone.”
― Alice Duer Miller, Poem, Five Books: Forsaking All Others / Winds In The Night / Are Women People? / The White Cliffs / Early Poems