Maria

“A little quiet contempt contributes greatly to the elegance of life".”
― George Eliot, The Lifted Veil

“Of all these myths none is more firmly anchored in masculine hearts than that of the feminine "mystery". It has numerous advantages. And first of all it permits an easy explanation of all that appears inexplicable; the man who "does not understand" a woman is happy to substitute an objective resistance for a subjective deficiency of mind; instead of admitting his ignorance, he perceives the presence of a "mystery" outside himself; an alibi, indeed, that flatters laziness and vanity at once.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.”
― George Eliot , Felix Holt, The Radical