Leafy Quotes

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The newest book quotes in the Leafy Quotes collection — passages readers have just added, each with its author, book and the page it came from.

  1. When an individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior. But the significance of the verb to be must be rightly understood here; it is in bad faith to give it a static value when it really has the dynamic Hegelian sense of "to have become." Yes, women on the whole are today inferior to men; that is, their situation affords them fewer possibilities. The question is: should that state of affairs continue?

    Many men hope that it will continue; not all have given up the battle.

  2. Cooking is revelation and creation; and a woman can find special satisfaction in a successful cake or a flaky pastry, for not every one can do it: one must have the gift.

    p. 506

  3. One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

    p. 133

  4. All agree in recognising the fact that females exist in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity.

  5. Try to stay a man amongst men … There's no other hope for you.

  6. Were we really more advanced than the alchemists of Carmona? We had brought to light certain facts that they were not aware of, we had organised them into the right order; but had we advanced even a step nearer to the mysterious heart of the universe?

  7. He walks in the street, a picture of modesty in his felt hat and his gabardine suit, and all the while he's thinking, "I'm immortal." The world is his, time is his, and I'm nothing but an insect.

    p. 28

  8. What did today's sacrifices matter: the Universe lay ahead in the future. What did burnings at the stake and massacres matter? The Universe was somewhere else, always somewhere else! And it isn't anywhere: there are only men, men eternally divided.

    p. 201

  9. You're unique like all other women.

    p. 55

  10. There is only one good. And that is to act according to the dictates of one's conscience.

    p. 181

  11. He had not applauded, he had remained seated, but he had looked at her steadily. From the depths of eternity he had looked at her and Rosalind became immortal. If I could believe him, she thought, if only I could believe him!

    p. 30

  12. It was as though some stubborn god spent their time in an immutable and absurd balancing act between life and death, prosperity and poverty.

    p. 81