Margaret Halsey Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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

• 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

• 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

• My knees could have been stirred with a spoon.

  Margaret Halsey

  Fear, Spoons, Knees

  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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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”

  4 Copy quote

• 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”

  4 Copy quote

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

  Margaret Halsey

  Trying, Flow

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  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”

  4 Copy quote

• The real nature of an ethic is that it does not become an ethic unless and until it goes into action.

  Margaret Halsey

  Real, Doe, Ethics

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

  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”

  4 Copy quote

• If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means -- from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath.

  Margaret Halsey

  Education, Mean, College

  4 Copy quote

• I would have felt more comfortable on a girder fifty floors above the street, catching white-hot rivets in a pail.

  Margaret Halsey

  White, Anxiety, Hot

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

  4 Copy quote

• it is a waste of time to ask more of people than they have to give.

  Margaret Halsey

  People, Giving, Waste

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

  4 Copy quote

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