"The fundamental impulse of the movement is neither masturbatory nor concretely lesbian -- although it of course offers warm house to both these possibilities; it is an impulse to maidenhood -- to that condition in which a woman might pretend to a false fear or loathing of the penis in order to escape from any responsibility for the pleasure and well-being of the man who possesses it."

Decter, Midge on feminism
5 fans of this quote   

"The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time."

Mill, John Stuart on eccentricity
5 fans of this quote   

"Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained."

Mill, John Stuart on eccentricity
4 fans of this quote   

"The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves."

Mill, John Stuart on feminism
3 fans of this quote   

"The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it."

Mill, John Stuart on freedom   

"But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal Impulses and preferences."

Mill, John Stuart on individuality   

"He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale."

Johnson, Samuel on life   

"Through some strange and powerful principle of mental chemistry which she has never divulged, nature wraps up in the impulse of strong desire, that something which recognizes no such word as impossible, and accepts no such reality as failure."

Hill, Napoleon on desire
4 fans of this quote   

"Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom, indeed."

Unknown, Source on freedom   

"The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure."

Wilde, Oscar on criticism   

"To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman."

Mill, John Stuart on understanding
7 fans of this quote   

"The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine."

Mill, John Stuart on bureaucracy   

"We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still."

Mill, John Stuart on repression
3 fans of this quote   

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth on forgiveness
10 fans of this quote   

"Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together."

Hare, David on art
4 fans of this quote   

"In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart."

White, Elwyn Brooks on age and aging   

"There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it."

Barthes, Roland on alienation
3 fans of this quote   

"Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true."

Dickens, Charles on communication
4 fans of this quote   

"A life-worshipper's philosophy is comprehensive. He is at one moment a positivist and at another a mystic: now haunted by the thought of death and now a Dionysian child of nature; now a pessimist and now, with a change of lover or liver or even the weather, an exuberant believer that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world."

Huxley, Aldous on life   

"The sensual and spiritual are linked together by a mysterious bond, sensed by our emotions, though hidden from our eyes. To this double nature of the visible and invisible world -- to the profound longing for the latter, coupled with the feeling of the sweet necessity for the former, we owe all sound and logical systems of philosophy, truly based on the immutable principles of our nature, just as from the same source arise the most senseless enthusiasms."

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von on spirituality   

"But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo; the splendor of fame fades into nothing; but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette."

Thurber, James on spirituality   

"The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on spirituality
7 fans of this quote   

"You have the need and the right to spend part of your life caring for your soul. It is not easy. You have to resist the demands of the work-oriented, often defensive, element in your psyche that measures life only in terms of output -- how much you produce -- not in terms of the quality of your life experiences. To be a soulful person means to go against all the pervasive, prove-yourself values of our culture and instead treasure what is unique and internal and valuable in yourself and your own personal evolution."

Bolen, Jean Shinoda on soul
4 fans of this quote   

"All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation."

FeNelon, Francois on spirituality   

"My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return."

Angelou, Maya on hope
96 fans of this quote   

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."

Moore, George on love
5 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children, the light of the sun, the sighing of the wind, and the gleam of the stars --all the beauties of creation."

Hugo, Victor on absence
11 fans of this quote   

"Home interprets heaven. Home is heaven for beginners."

Parkhurst, Charles H. on home
9 fans of this quote   

"Love makes the wildest spirit tame, and the tamest spirit wild."

Delp, Alexis on love
13 fans of this quote   

"Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty. There is a way out of every dark mist, over a rainbow trail."

Navajo, Edward A. on beauty
3 fans of this quote   

"Stars are good too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. But I suppose I never can. You would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it. When they first showed last night I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn't reach, which astonished me. Then I tried clods till I was all tired out, but I never got one. I did make some close shots, for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into thee midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if I could've held out a little longer, maybe I could've got one."

Twain, Mark on perseverance
4 fans of this quote   

"A man who has never lost himself in a cause bigger than himself has missed one of life's mountaintop experiences. Only in losing himself does he find himself. Only then does he discover all the latent strengths he never knew he had and which otherwise would have remained dormant."

Nixon, Richard M. on causes
4 fans of this quote   

"We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground."

Thoreau, Henry David on wilderness   

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor."

Thoreau, Henry David on ability
6 fans of this quote   

"A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams."

Thoreau, Henry David on friends and friendship
4 fans of this quote   

"You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds."

Thoreau, Henry David on eccentricity
20 fans of this quote   

"All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on walking
6 fans of this quote   

"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake."

Stevens, Wallace on truth
3 fans of this quote   

"Cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit to help you inflict suffering. Swearing on the other hand, is invoking, only the witness of a spirit to an statement you wish to make."

Ruskin, John on curses   

"The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings."

Buber, Martin on world
3 fans of this quote