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“Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”
― What's Wrong with the World
― What's Wrong with the World
“There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.”
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“Exposure to true information does not matter anymore.
A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information.
The facts tell nothing to him.
Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures.
Even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union, and show him a concentration camp,
he will refuse to believe it, until he is going to receive a kick in his fat bottom.
When the military boot crushes his balls, then he will understand, but not before that.
That is the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.”
―
A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information.
The facts tell nothing to him.
Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures.
Even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union, and show him a concentration camp,
he will refuse to believe it, until he is going to receive a kick in his fat bottom.
When the military boot crushes his balls, then he will understand, but not before that.
That is the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.”
―
“The world is so full of a number of things, I ’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
― A Child's Garden of Verses
― A Child's Garden of Verses
“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.”
― Brideshead Revisited
― Brideshead Revisited
Victorians!
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Some of the best books in the world were written and published in Great Britain between 1837 and 1901. What's not to love? Dickens, the Brontes, Co ...more
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