Margaret Halsey Quotes - Page 2

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• The great disadvantage of being in a rat race is that it is humiliating. The competitors in a rat race are by definition rodents.

  Margaret Halsey

  Race, Rodents, Definitions

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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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 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

• 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

• Bulldogs have been known to fall on their swords when confronted by my superior tenacity.

  Margaret Halsey

  Funny, Dog, Fall

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

  88 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

  Margaret Halsey

  Political, Growth, Defeated

  11 Copy quote

• From a purely tourist standpoint, Oxford is overpowering, being so replete with architecture and history and anecdote that the visitor's mind feels dribbling and helpless, as with an over-large mouthful of nougat.

  Margaret Halsey

  Oxford, Mind, Visitors

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

  6 Copy quote

• Working with children is the easiest part of educating for democracy, because children are still undefeated and have no stake in being prejudiced.

  Margaret Halsey

  Children, Justice, Diversity

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

  5 Copy quote

• people coming away from a session with Dr. S. usually looked as if they had had fifty minutes on the anvil with an apprentice blacksmith.

  Margaret Halsey

  Doctors, People, Fifty

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

  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 conversation whipped gaily around the table like rags in a high wind.

  Margaret Halsey

  Wind, Rags, Tables

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

  4 Copy quote

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