Margaret Halsey Quotes - Page 2

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• democracy produces both heroes and villains, but it differs from a fascist state in that it does not produce a hero who is a villain.

  Margaret Halsey

  Hero, Democracy, Doe

  4 Copy quote

• English life is seventh-eighths below the surface, like an iceberg, and living in England for a year constitutes merely an introduction to an introduction to an introduction to it.

  Margaret Halsey

  Years, England, Life Is

  4 Copy quote

• Our Republic is not a pastoral, not a military, not an agricultural, not a nomadic, not a clerical, but a business civilization. Nor is there anything random, casual or accidental about the United States as a business society. It is thoroughly well integrated - organized from top to bottom for the maximum efficiency of commerce and industry, for the maximum efficiency of making money.

  Margaret Halsey

  Military, Civilization, United States

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

  4 Copy quote

• The stress laid on upward social mobility in the United States has tended to obscure the fact that there can be more than one kind of mobility and more than one direction in which it can go. There can be ethical mobility as well as financial, and it can go down as well as up.

  Margaret Halsey

  Stress, One Direction, Mobility

  4 Copy quote

• Humorists are not humorous twenty-four hours a day. In fact, when you get to know them well, they are often not humorous at all. They tend to be hypersensitive, taut, neurotic creatures driven by God know what obscure compulsion to earn their living the hard way.

  Margaret Halsey

  Humorous, Four, Way

  Margaret Halsey (1946). “Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro”

  5 Copy quote

• being in the middle class is a feeling as well as an income level.

  Margaret Halsey

  Class, Feelings, Levels

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

  4 Copy quote

• A business society, therefore, always has in its children a large group of individuals who cannot make money and who do not understand (or want to understand) the profit motive. In short, they are subversives.

  Margaret Halsey

  Children, Business, Groups

  4 Copy quote

• He must have had a magnificent build before his stomach went in for a career of its own.

  Margaret Halsey

  Sarcastic, Careers, Stomach

  Margaret Halsey (1944). “Some of My Best Friends are Soldiers: A Kind of Novel”, New York : Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• The only men who can turn my blood stream into a condition resembling heavy surf are good-looking heels with characters as intricately unpleasant as the sewers of Paris. With decent and honorable gents, I come all over Platonic. Was ever a woman so perverse and wrongheaded?

  Margaret Halsey

  Character, Men, Blood

  4 Copy quote

• ... the English think of an opinion as something which a decent person, if he has the misfortune to have one, does all he can to hide.

  Margaret Halsey

  Thinking, Doe, Opinion

  4 Copy quote

• We know of our own knowledge that we are human beings, and, as such, imperfect. But we are bathed by the communications industry in a ceaseless tide of inhuman, impossible perfection.

  Margaret Halsey

  Communication, Perfection, Tides

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

  5 Copy quote

• The attitude of the English towards English history reminds one a good deal of the attitude of a Hollywood director towards love.

  Margaret Halsey

  Attitude, English History, Insulting

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

  4 Copy quote

• The English never smash in a face. They merely refrain from asking it to dinner.

  Margaret Halsey

  Upper Class, Insulting, Asking

  With Malice Toward Some pt. 3 (1938)

  9 Copy quote

• In some circumstances, the refusal to be defeated is a refusal to be educated.

  Margaret Halsey

  Political, Growth, Defeated

  11 Copy quote

• Some persons talk simply because they think sound is more manageable than silence.

  Margaret Halsey

  Thinking, Silence, Sound

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

  4 Copy quote

• Living in England, provincial England, must be like being married to a stupid but exquisitely beautiful wife.

  Margaret Halsey

  Funny, Beautiful, Stupid

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

  6 Copy quote

• Listening to Britons dining out is like watching people play first-class tennis with imaginary balls.

  Margaret Halsey

  Class, Play, People

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

  4 Copy quote

• Whatever the rest of the world thinks of the English gentleman, the English lady regards him apprehensively as something between God and a goat and equally formidable on both scores.

  Margaret Halsey

  Thinking, Gentleman, World

  4 Copy quote

• I was well warned about English food, so it did not surprise me, but I do wonder sometimes, how they ever manage to prise it up long enough to get a plate under it.

  Margaret Halsey

  Long, Sometimes, Wonder

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

  7 Copy quote

• The soup, thin and dark and utterly savorless, tasted as if it had been drained out of the umbrella stand.

  Margaret Halsey

  Food, Dark, Cooking

  Margaret Halsey (1938). “With Malice Toward Some”

  4 Copy quote

• when I spoke of having a drink, it was a euphemism for having a whole flock of them.

  Margaret Halsey

  Drinking, Flocks, Spokes

  4 Copy quote

• Employed as I had been employing it, liquor is a fixative of old patterns.

  Margaret Halsey

  Patterns, Liquor, Employed

  Margaret Halsey (1977). “No Laughing Matter: The Autobiography of a Wasp”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

  4 Copy quote

• The feelings, myths and prejudices about the Negro American which now seem so valid and real to some of our white contemporaries will take their place on the shelf along with the belief in witches and the notion that the earth is the center of the solar system.  Nobody knows as yet whether the future [of the race situation] is hopeless. All we know is that it can be made hopeless, if enough people choose to consider it so.

  Margaret Halsey

  Real, Race, White

  4 Copy quote

• If you embark on a project as magnificent in concept as the brotherhood of man, it is foolish not to anticipate difficulties of proportionate magnificence.

  Margaret Halsey

  Men, Brotherhood Of Man, Magnificence

  Margaret Halsey (1946). “Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro”

  4 Copy quote

• This year's blasphemy is next year's liberating truth.

  Margaret Halsey

  Years, Ideas, Next

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

  4 Copy quote

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