Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.
When you do nothing you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.
I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.
Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.
When you know better you do better.
In all my work, I try to say - 'You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?'
This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.
You don't want modesty, you want humility. Humility comes from inside out. It says someone was here before me and I'm here because I've been paid for. I have something to do and I will do that because I'm paying for someone else who has yet to come.
I married a man once and we had been married over a year before I found he preferred potatoes. I said, "I didn't know you loved potatoes." And he said that until he was about 13, he thought rice was potato seeds.
The desire to reach hearts is wise
If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution. I had to learn technique and surrender my ignorance.
That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.
Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.
I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.
I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.
I like to go back and read poems that I wrote fifty years ago, twenty years ago, and sometimes they surprise me - I didn't know I knew that then. Or maybe I didn't know it then, and I know more now.
Poetry gave me back my voice.
I keep hitting the escape button but I am still here!
Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.
I know that you that you may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. If you accept that you have been defeated, you give power to the force that is trying to defeat you.
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.
You know, I never trust people who don't laugh, who said, "I am serious" and act as if they put airplane glue on the back of their hands and stuck the glue to their foreheads. I think, "You're not serious; you're boring as hell."
I think a hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people.
To make a difference is not a matter of accident...People CHOOSE to make a difference.
To be angry is very good. It burns out things and leaves nutrients in the soil. You should always be ready to be angry at injustice and cruelty.
Pretty Women Wonder Where My Secret Lies, Im Not Cute Or Built To Fit A Fashion Models Size.
In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like.
Moderation in all things. And even moderation in moderation. Don't get too much moderation, you know?
A certain person wondered why a big strong girl like me wouldn't keep a job which paid a normal salary. I took my time to lead her and to read her every page. Even minimal people can't survive on minimal wage. A certain person wondered why I wait all week for you. I didn't have the words to describe just what you do. I said you had the motion of the ocean in your walk, and when you solve my riddles you don't even have to talk.
If it is true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, isn't it also true a society is only as healthy as its sickest citizen and only as wealthy as its most deprived?
The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.
A societies needs determines their ethics
Jealousy in romance is like salt in food. A little can enhance the savor, but too much can spoil the pleasure and, under certain circumstances, can be life-threatening.
I'm very, very serious - I'm serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely wedded to the next moment.
Everybody is worth everything.
Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence - neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish - it is an imponderably valuable gift. Each of us has a few minutes a day or a few hours a week which we could donate to an old folks home or a children's hospital ward. The elderly whose pillows we plump or whose water pitchers we refill may or may not thank us for our gift, but the gift is upholding the foundation of the universe.
I'm grateful to be of use. I will not be misused or abused, but I will be of use to anybody.
I believe what I have to say is important, and I believe the people coming to hear me are important, and so the occasion of itself alone has an importance, which forces me to stare down my nerves.
Education is a process that goes on 'til death. The moment you see someone who knows she has found the one true way, and can call all the others false, then you know you're in the company of an ignoramus.
No sun outlasts its sunset, but will rise again and bring the dawn.
And I not only have the right to stand up for myself, but I have the responsibility. I can't ask somebody else to stand up for me if I won't stand up for myself. And once you stand up for yourself, you'd be surprised that people say, "Can I be of help?"
When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.
Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.
I never have written every day. When I'm writing a book, I write Monday through Friday. I always try to take Saturday and pretend to have some sanity.
Have a purpose to your life: Purpose does not mean having a job...You can have a job and still be unfulfilled.
All great acheivements require time.
Every day offers you 10,000 reasons to cry, but if you can find just one reason to laugh then you will be all right.
We have it in us to be splendid.
He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.
I have enough of life in me to make somebody jealous enough to want to knock me down. I have so much courage in me that I have the effrontery, the incredible gall to stand up. That's it. That's how you get to know who you are.
Being physically close to extreme power causes one to experience a giddiness, an intoxication.
No human being can be more human than another human being. I liberate you from my ignorance.
Life is a gift, and i try to respond with grace and courtesy.
If we live long enough, we may even get over war. I imagine a time when somebody will mention the word war and everyone in the room will start to laugh. And what do you mean war?
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
I encourage courtesy. To accept nothing less than courtesy, and to give nothing less than courtesy.
What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.
Take the blinders from your vision take the padding from your ears and confess you've heard me crying and admit you've seen my tears.
On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there's no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.
