Ruth Stebelska > Recent Status Updates

Half the harm that is done in the world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't want to do harm - but the harm does not interest them... or they don't see it... because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves. [TS Eliot]

All understanding of the imperfectibility of life is necessary for both happiness and virtue.

Those who, in confidence of superior capacities or attainments, disregard the common maxims of life, shall be reminded that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible [S. Johnson]

There is no torture greater than that of a man who is unable to express what is in his soul.

Grammatical latitudinarianism is the natural ideological ally of moral and cultural relativism.

Look at yourself, girl. You have more issues than the National Geographic!

The notion that human relations ought to be permanently and passionately blissful, and therefore that every social, contractual, economic and customary obstacle to the achievement of this end ought to be removed, thereby eliminating every source of frustration, leads to overindulgence, neglect and violence towards children.

The notion that human relations ought to be permanently and passionately blissful, and therefore that every social, contractual, economic and customary obstacle to the achievement of this end ought to be removed, thereby eliminating every source of frustration, leads to overindulgence, neglect and violence towards children.

“At the end of our conversation she (Martha Stout) turned to address you, the reader. She said if you're beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognize some of those traits in yourself, if you're feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one.”

“At the end of our conversation she (Martha Stout) turned to address you, the reader. She said if you're beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognize some of those traits in yourself, if you're feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one.”