Brigitta > Brigitta's Quotes

“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“it's telling yourself that you want the things that society tells you you should want. women thikn that survival depends on conformity. but for some women, conformity is death. it's a death to the soul. the soul, "she said, "is a precious thing. when you live a lie, you damage the soul.”
― Candace Bushnell, Lipstick Jungle

“So much of being a woman is telling lies, isn’t it?” Victory asked. “It’s telling yourself that you want the things that society tells you you should want. Women think that survival depends on conformity. But for some women, conformity is death. It’s a death to the soul. The soul,” she said, “is a precious thing. When you live a lie, you damage the soul.”
― Candace Bushnell, Lipstick Jungle

“Cycles exist because they are excruciating to break. It takes an astronomical amount of pain and courage to disrupt a familiar pattern. Sometimes it seems easier to just keep running in the same familiar circles, rather than facing the fear of jumping and possibly not landing on your feet.

My mother went through it.

I went through it.

I'll be damned if I allow my daughter to go through it.

I kiss her on the forehead and make her a promise. "It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us

“We all have a limit. What we’re willing to put up with before we break. When I married your father, I knew exactly what my limit was. But slowly . . . with every incident . . . my limit was pushed a little more. And a little more. The first time your father hit me, he was immediately sorry. He swore it would never happen again. The second time he hit me, he was even more sorry. The third time it happened, it was more than a hit. It was a beating. And every single time, I took him back. But the fourth time, it was only a slap. And when that happened, I felt relieved. I remember thinking, ‘At least he didn’t beat me this time. This wasn’t so bad.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us

“Cycles exist because they are excruciating to break. It takes an astronomical amount of pain and courage to disrupt a familiar pattern. Sometimes it seems easier to just keep running in the same familiar circles, rather than facing the fear of jumping and possibly not landing on your feet.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us

“...there are a lot of women writers who never get married and don't have kids. I am married, but I didn't marry until I was 43. I knew when I was young that if I had to make a choice between being married and being a writer, I would have chosen to be a writer. I think it's a career where you have to put the career first. I don't have kids but - and luckily everyone isn't like this — I think if you have that passion, in a way, your career is your child.”
― Candace Bushnell

“Why was it that no matter what a woman accomplished in the world, if she hadn't married and had children, she was still considered a failure?”
― Candace Bushnell, Lipstick Jungle

“What most women thought were "the rules" were simply precepts to keep women in their place. "Nice" was a comfortable, reassuring box where society told women if they stayed–if they didn't stray out of the nice box–they would be safe. But no one was safe. Safety was a lie, especially when it came to business. The only rules were about power: who had it and who could exercise it.”
― Candace Bushnell, Lipstick Jungle

“Thank goodness for the first snow, it was a reminder--no matter how old you became and how much you'd seen, things could still be new if you were willing to believe they still mattered.”
― Candace Bushnell, Lipstick Jungle

“But something happened to you when you'd had lots of relationships, meaning lots of breakups as well. At first, it hurt terribly, and you thought you'd never be able to get over it. But then you learned to be circumspect. You were only hurt because the guy had taken away your dream of the relationship. You understood that hurt feelings were really only about ego, about the self-absorbed idea that every man you were with should love you, thay the universe owed you that.”
― Candace Bushnell, Lipstick Jungle

“Nobody knows exactly how they're going to behave until they're faced with certain challenges. It's one of the great things in life–putting yourself in positions to meet new challenges and not being afraid to do so. It's what keeps life interesting and ultimately makes you the best person you can be.”
― Candace Bushnell, Lipstick Jungle

“Only our spirits can understand beauty, or live and grow with it. It puzzles our minds; we are unable to describe it in words; it is a sensation that our eyes cannot see, derived from both the one who observes and the one who is looked upon. Real beauty is a ray which emanates from the holy of holies of the spirit, and illuminates the body, as life comes from the depths of the earth and gives colour and scent to a flower.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

“Selma sat by the window, looking on with sorrowful eyes and not speaking, although beauty has its own heavenly language, loftier than he voices of tongues and lips. It is a timeless language, common to all humanity, a calm lake that attracts the singing rivulets to its depth and makes them silent.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

“Did my spirit and Selma’s reach out to each other that day when we met, and did that yearning make me see her as the most beautiful woman under the sun? Or was I intoxicated with the wine of youth which made me fancy that which never existed?

Did my youth blind my natural eyes and make me imagine the brightness of her eyes, the sweetness of her mouth, and the grace of her figure? Or was it that her brightness, sweetness, and grace opened my eyes and showed me the happiness and sorrow of love?”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

“Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that the laws of humanity and the phenomena of nature do not alter its course.”
― Kahlil Gibran, Broken Wings

“Every visit gave me a new meaning to her beauty and a new insight into her sweet spirit, Until she became a book whose pages I could understand and whose praises I could sing, but which I could never finish reading. A woman whom Providence has provided with beauty of spirit and body is a truth, at the same time both open and secret, which we can understand only by love, and touch only by virtue; and when we attempt to describe such a woman she disappears like vapour.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

“It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created in years or even generations.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

“The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

“the moments which united us are greater than centuries, and the light that illuminated our spirits is stronger than the dark; and if the tempest separates us on this rough ocean, the waves will unite us on the calm shore; and if this life kills us, death will unite us.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

“I want you to love me as a poet loves his sorrowful thoughts. I want you to remember me as a traveller remembers a calm pool in which his image was reflected as he drank its water. I want you to remember me as a mother remember her child that died before it saw the light, and I want you to remember me as a merciful king remembers a prisoner who died before his pardon reached him. I want you to be my companion, and I want you to visit my father and console him in his solitude because I shall be leaving him soon and shall be a stranger to him.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

“I will do all you have said and will make my soul an envelope for your soul, and my heart a residence for your beauty and my breast a grave for your sorrows. I shall love you , Selma, as the prairies love the spring, and I shall live in you in the life of a flower under the sun’s rays. I shall sing your name as the valley sings the echo of the bells of the village churches; I shall listen to the language of your soul as the shore listens to the story of the waves. I shall remember you as a stranger remembers his beloved country, and as a hungry man remembers a banquet, and as a dethroned king remembers the days of his glory, and as a prisoner remembers the hours of ease and freedom. I shall remember you as a sower remembers the bundles of wheat on his threshing flour, and as a shepherd remembers the green prairies the sweet brooks.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

“But my dear readers, don’t’ you think that such a woman is like a nation that is oppressed by priests and rulers? Don’t you believe that thwarted love which leads a woman to the grave is like the despair which pervades the people of the earth? A woman is to a nation as light is to a lamp. Will not the light be dim if the oil in the lamp is low?”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

“It is Love, purified with fire, that stops me from following you to the farthest land. Love kills my desires so that you may live freely and virtuously. Limited love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The broken wings: Kahlil Gibram

“Now why should that man have fainted? But he did,and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper

“I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper

“I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very ' bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so:...”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper

“You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

“If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do? . . .
So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas . . .”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper

“I carried the books to my room and read through the night. I loved the fiery pages of Mary Wollstonecraft, but there was a single line written by John Stuart Mill that, when I read it, moved the world: “It is a subject on which nothing final can be known.” The subject Mill had in mind was the nature of women. Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations.”
― Tara Westover, Educated