Phyllis T. Smith > Quotes

“I have often thought,” she said, “that women are the only true adults in the world, and men are a species of children. When babies are born, when the sick are struggling for life, when the old die, you will see women about, but rarely men.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“It is a joy to be appreciated for the thing you want to be appreciated for. To be appreciated as a woman, and also to be appreciated as a creature with a mind—what more could I have wanted?”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“When I was a girl, I imagined love was a kind of prize for virtuous behavior. That was how the philosophers described it. Love was a tribute that flowed naturally only to those with undivided spirits and pure hearts. It occurred to me now that it was something else, wilder and less comprehensible. An affinity of the soul? Even that did not encompass it.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“I wonder how many women from time immemorial have thought that if only women could rule the world it would be better than it is.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“Sometimes you are going down a particular road, and the journey seems so long that you can almost imagine it will never end. Then you reach a landmark, and that is enough to make you understand that indeed you are covering distance, and reaching your destination is only a matter of time.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“promised myself I would never cry again for this cause. I would not attend anymore to my guilt, or my regrets about the past. I would turn my face away from all that and look toward the future.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“Women carry the burden of the family’s survival on their backs. Do you understand what I am saying?”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“Will you explain this to me: Why do women conjure up difficulties where none exist?” “Because women are wise, and they see the future coming down the road long before men see it.” “Oh. I thought it was because they delight in misery.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“You have to adapt to life as it comes, Selene, in order to live at all. Little in this world is just as it should be. You look at the choices the gods present to you, and then you choose.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, The Daughters of Palatine Hill

“Suppose the gods decided what I needed now was to marry an extraordinarily intelligent wife? I think they’re fully capable of arranging that, don’t you?” He spoke earnestly, not as if he meant to flatter me but almost as if he were talking to himself. If he had written me a dozen poems rhapsodizing about my eyes, my hair, and my dulcet voice, it would have meant far less to me. It is a joy to be appreciated for the thing you want to be appreciated for. To be appreciated as a woman, and also to be appreciated as a creature with a mind—what more could I have wanted?”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“Livia has gotten bad press. Rumor has a way even now of attaching to women who break the conventional mold, and it certainly did in ancient Rome.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“there are men in politics whose greatest aim is to look exalted in their own eyes.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“Of course I recovered. I have always been strong.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“In Rome, a woman’s power, however circumspectly exercised, arouses revulsion. Every death in my family circle has been laid at my door.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“My knees ache when I walk, but if I sit still, I do not feel so different from the girl I was.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“I have often thought,” she said, “that women are the only true adults in the world, and men are a species of children. When babies are born, when the sick are struggling for life, when the old die, you will see women about, but rarely men. Women carry the burden of the family’s survival on their backs.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“And then, I saw my fate. I would not be fifteen forever, but I always would be a woman. I imagined spending all my years having my words discounted.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“There are periods when life is so pleasant one can almost imagine the world is sun-dappled and safe.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“wondered what had become of Marcus Brutus’s wife, Portia. She had ardently espoused the Republican cause and encouraged her husband in the course he had taken. The day after we heard news of my father’s funeral, word came of her fate. Often when a man is impelled by honor to take his own life, his wife will do the same. And so Portia did, most painfully, jamming a hot coal down her throat.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“A gladiatorial arena—that was how I saw my world.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, The Daughters of Palatine Hill

“A day is a day whether you are a washerwoman or a baker or the ruler of Rome. You can’t increase the number of hours.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“Some would say it hardly mattered what women thought of Tavius, that even senators' wives, like Mucia, had no power to shape events. But what if Portia, Brutus's beloved wife, rather than encouraging his plan to assassinate Julius Caesar, had told him he would pointlessly destroy himself and others? I think Portia might have changed history.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“I had learned some things in the years of our marriage. I knew how great power could work on you, and destroy everything human in you. Always separate and above other people, able to confer great benefits or do great harm with a word, fawned over, you started to believe the false praise. It was easy to imagine yourself as godlike, to regard the common run of humanity with contempt. In such circumstances it took strength not to become a monster. Add to this the responsibility for everything that happened in a vast empire, and one could easily lose one’s reason.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, The Daughters of Palatine Hill

“Sometimes the most direct road is not the best one. Often men do not know this, but it is something girls learn young.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, The Daughters of Palatine Hill

“To be appreciated as a woman, and also to be appreciated as a creature with a mind - what more could I have wanted?”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“Women carry the burden of the family’s survival on their backs.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“Where thou art Gaius, I am Gaia,”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“I decided that if I survived I would never do what Father had done, never defer to anyone’s judgment or refuse to look clear-eyed at the world. I would never be so blind, never.
If I survived”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“A day is a day whether you are a washerwoman or a baker or the ruler of Rome.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia

“In his arrogance, Caesar had even renamed one of the months of the year—the most beautiful summer month—Julius, after himself.”
― Phyllis T. Smith, I Am Livia