Veronica > Veronica's Quotes

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“Bitterness is the coward's revenge on the world for having been hurt.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“I love myself when I am laughing. . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean & Impressive

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“But life is a battle: may we all be enabled to fight it well!”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Letters of Charlotte Brontë

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: "I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.

Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas...marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short...and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.”
― Adrienne Rich

“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Friendship however is a plant which cannot be forced -- true friendship is no gourd spring up in a night and withering in a day.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Letters of Charlotte Brontë

“Jane Eyre
"I desired more...than was within my reach. Who blames me? Many call me discontented. I couldn't help it: the restlessness is in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“I feel more helpless with you than without you.”
― Adrienne Rich

“When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”
― Adrienne Rich

“Lying is done with words, and also with silence.”
― Adrienne Rich, Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying

“You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.”
― Adrienne Rich

“There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.”
― Adrienne Rich

“The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.”
― Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. Selected Prose 1966-1978

“There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet”
― Adrienne Rich

“Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness”
― Adrienne Rich

“The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can't afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life.”
― Adrienne Rich

“When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“A man attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself. ”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“That's what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed