Margaret Halsey Quotes - Page 3

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• I was so embarrassed I could feel my nerves curling like bacon over a hot fire.

  Margaret Halsey

  Fire, Hot, Nerves

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

  4 Copy quote

• A lady getting a missing belt back from the cleaner couldn't have been more surprised and pleased.

  Margaret Halsey

  Missing, Belts, Cleaners

  Margaret Halsey (1944). “...Some of My Best Friends are Soldiers: A Kind of Novel”

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• Life itself, however, flows and is sequential and punishes those who try to compartmentalize it.

  Margaret Halsey

  Trying, Flow

  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

• ... giving up alcohol or cigarettes is a lead-pipe cinch compared to the renunciation of complacence by a former (self-appointed) elite.

  Margaret Halsey

  Giving Up, Self, Alcohol

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• Not being one to calculate or look ahead, I had not stopped to think, when boys started paying attention to me, that the cup might be dashed from my lips, though experience should have taught me that dashing cups from lips was the way Victorian parents got most of their exercise.

  Margaret Halsey

  Exercise, Boys, Thinking

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

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• ... organized religion, in a dominating business society, can do only one of two things. It can either assure the communicant with uneasy bluster that God Himself likes money -- a theory which convinces nobody -- or it can give him an apologetic, halfhearted invitation to go out and get himself crucified.

  Margaret Halsey

  Two, Giving, Likes

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

  4 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”

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• Passionately prejudiced people always turn out, under scrutiny, to be people who cannot get along on a footing of equality with anyone.

  Margaret Halsey

  People, Prejudice, Scrutiny

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• There are ... other business societies - England, Holland, Belgium and France, for instance. But ours [the United States] is the only culture now extant in which business so completely dominates the national scene that sports, crime, sex, death, philanthropy and Easter Sunday are money-making propositions.

  Margaret Halsey

  Sports, Easter, Sex

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

  7 Copy quote

• The people who are unprejudiced, but who ... feel it is so hopeless there is no use trying ... probably do just as much damage to the emotional atmosphere in which we are facing the problem as the fanatical Negrophobes.

  Margaret Halsey

  Emotional, People, Atmosphere

  4 Copy quote

• The integration of the Negro into American society is one of the most exciting challenges to self-development and self-mastery that any nation of people ever faced.

  Margaret Halsey

  Self, People, Challenges

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

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• 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

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• Life itself, however, flows and is sequential and punishes those who try to compartmentalize it. Thus if, for any reason whatsoever, moral standards are conspicuously and unprecedentedly breached in one area of society, such as the political, it will follow as the night the day that those standards will start collapsing all down the line-in sports, entertainment, education, the armed forces, business and government.

  Margaret Halsey

  Sports, Night, Government

  4 Copy quote

• I am living with a rising generation which talks like people coming out of ether.

  Margaret Halsey

  People, Generations, Rising

  Margaret Halsey (1960). “This Demi-paradise: A Westchester Diary”

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

  Margaret Halsey

  Drinking, Flocks, Spokes

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• It is impossible to betray another man's child - for whatever reason - without also betraying one's own. To do less than justice to another man's child, no matter who that man is, is to impair by that much the chances one's own children have for a life of meaning and purpose.

  Margaret Halsey

  Children, Men, Justice

  4 Copy quote

• Englishwomen's shoes look as if they had been made by someone who had often heard shoes described, but had never seen any.

  Margaret Halsey

  Shoes, England, Looks

  With Malice Toward Some pt. 2 (1938)

  6 Copy quote

• It is possible to eat English piecrust, whatever you may think at first. The English eat it, and when they stand up and walk away, they are hardly bent over at all.

  Margaret Halsey

  Food, Thinking, Firsts

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

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• Example is better than precept.

  Margaret Halsey

  Teaching, Learning, Example

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

  7 Copy quote

• How close beneath the surface, even in the happiest family, is the chronic grievance! I sometimes think that tinderboxes are inert and powder kegs mere talcum compared to the explosive possibilities in the most commoplace domestic situation.

  Margaret Halsey

  Thinking, Kegs, Sometimes

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• the American family is failing in its job of turning out stable human beings. ... It is failing because Americans do not dare to cultivate in themselves those characteristics which would make family life creative and rewarding. To do so, would ruin them financially.

  Margaret Halsey

  Jobs, Creative, Ruins

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

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• the psychological attitudes which are indispensable in the American market place are disastrous to family life. Family life ... requires yieldingness, generosity, sympathy, altruism, tenderness-all the qualities, in fact, which lead straight to bankruptcy. ... the American family is tragically out of gear with the profit structure which has mushroomed up around it.

  Margaret Halsey

  Attitude, Generosity, Quality

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

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• My knees could have been stirred with a spoon.

  Margaret Halsey

  Fear, Spoons, Knees

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

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• the whole flavor and quality of the American representative government turns to ashes on the tongue, if one regards that government as simply an inferior and rather second-rate sort of corporation.

  Margaret Halsey

  Government, Quality, Ashes

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

  4 Copy quote

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