Early Life Quotes - Page 2

• My business in life has been to think and learn, and to speak out with absolute freedom what I have thought and learned. The freedom is itself a positive and never-failing enjoyment to me, after the bondage of my early life.

  Harriet Martineau

  Thinking, Speaks Out, Atheism

  Harriet Martineau (2015). “Harriet Martineau's Autobiography (Vol. I: Abridged, Annotated)”, p.85, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• I think so much of my early life, even though I grew up White and middle class, I was completely shattered by the horrifically violent atmosphere I grew up in. I am a consequence of violence. That opened a door to many realities that I would not have experienced had I not survived what I did.

  Eve Ensler

  Reality, Thinking, Class

  Interview with Kevin Powell, bknation.org. May 1, 2014.

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• Pianists of extraordinary talent, such as Christina Petrowska,spend a large part of their early lives perfecting technique…Miss Petrowska,a Canadian with a phenomenal ability to play the most difficult music cleanly, gave a demonstration of her achievements at Carnegie Recital Hall. A product of the Juilliard School who studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gyorgy Ligeti in Europe, Miss Petrowska built most of her program around fiercely difficult contemporary works. She has fingers that work like chrome-plated pistons, and her high-seated position let her bring pulverizing power to bear.

  Donal Henahan

  School, Play, Europe

  "Dazzling, No More" by Donal Henahan, www.nytimes.com. May 18, 1977.

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• ... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.

  George Eliot

  Selfish, Gentleman, Vices

  George Eliot (1873). “Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. By George Eliot ....”, p.354

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• ... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,--if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.

  Hortense Odlum

  Marriage, Disappointment, Business

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• I can't point to any major episodes of sexual discrimination in my early life. But I was so aware of the crime, the shame that there was no use of my mother's ability and energy.

  Betty Friedan

  Mother, Energy, Use

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I regard the effort to introduce women into colleges for young men as very undesirable, and for many reasons. That the two sexes should be united, both as teachers and pupils, in the same institution seems very desirable, but rarely in early life by a method that removes them from parental watch and care, and the protecting influences of a home.

  Catharine Beecher

  Teacher, Sex, Home

  Catharine Esther Beecher (1872). “Woman's Profession as Mother and Educator: With Views in Opposition to Woman Suffrage”, p.69

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• I have a good memory for early life. My visual memory is good about childhood and adolescence, and less good in the last 10 years. I could probably tell you less what happened in the last 10 years. I remember what houses looked like, sometimes they just pop into my head.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Memories, Years, House

  "Interview: Jeffrey Eugenides on writing in C major". Interview with Carolyn Kellogg, latimesblogs.latimes.com. October 29, 2011.

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• In my early life, and probably even today, it is not sufficiently understood that a child's education should include at least a rudimentary grasp of religion, sex, and money. Without a basic knowledge of these three primary facts in a normal human being's life --subjects which stir the emotions, create events and opportunities, and if they do not wholly decide must greatly influence an individual's personality --no human being's education can have a safe foundation.

  Phyllis Bottome

  Education, Sex, Children

  Phyllis Bottome (1948). “Search for a Soul”, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock [1948]

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• As we grow older, the memories of early life brighten, those of maturity and senescence grow dim and confused.

  Anthony Burgess

  Memories, Confused, Maturity

  Anthony Burgess (1990). “You've had your time: being the second part of the confessions of Anthony Burgess”, Heinemann Educational Books

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• I was partially raised by an aunt who was a dress designer, so I was around her studio all of my early life. I know materials. I can look through Harper's Bazaar and decide what works and what doesn't, or any other magazine, Seventeen if you wish.

  Ray Bradbury

  Aunt, Wish, Dresses

  Source: blankonblank.org

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• Every parent knows this moment in a child's age when he or she needs your attention in a very specific way because it's the beginning and ending of the early life of imagination. It's such a responsibility.

  Nicole Ari Parker

  Children, Responsibility, Imagination

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• There will be some trouble about 'biography' because I have never troubled myself to supply particulars of my early life to any writer.

  Arthur Wing Pinero

  Legacy, Biographies, Trouble

  Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (1917). “The Social Plays of Arthur Wing Pinero”

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• Discipline our youth in early life in sound maxims of moral, political, and religious duties.

  Noah Webster

  Religious, Discipline, Political

  Noah Webster (1953). “Letters”

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• I certainly spent many years in my early life chasing all over the globe for meaning and purpose. I'd feel like I'd found it, then it would fade away again.

  Roger Housden

  Years, Purpose, Found

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• I think the thing is that you're very affected by your early life, and I think that if you ever had that feeling of outsider, or loneliness or whatever, it just doesn't leave you. You can be happy and successful, whatever, but I think that thing stays inside of you. It doesn't ever really leave you. You kind of always will have that.

  Tim Burton

  Loneliness, Successful, Thinking

  Source: www.chud.com

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• I don't think of myself as particularly earnest. I have long bouts of cynicism and skepticism. So much of my early life was full of uncertainties. It still is. My "Buddha book" expresses that. Perhaps that's what created this impression of earnestness.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Book, Thinking, Long

  Interview with Sarah Fay, staging.believermag.com. March 2007.

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• I do remember how it was to be poor. I do remember that in my early years, we had to grow and raise all of our food, even our animals. And I remember in my early life, we didn't even have electricity. So it was very, very hard times then.

  Dolly Parton

  Hard Times, Animal, Years

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• Almost all men are over anxious. No sooner do they enter the world than they lose that taste for natural and simple pleasures so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honor and on they go as their fathers went before them till weary and sick at heart they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood.

  Samuel Rogers

  Regret, Father, Heart

  Samuel Rogers (1842). “Italy, a Poem”, p.178

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• If an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitious man marry a wife on whose name there is a stain, which, though it originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by cold and sordid people upon her, and upon his children also: and, in exact proportion to his success in the world, be cast in his teeth, and made the subject of sneers against him: he may, no matter how generous and good his nature, one day repent of the connection he formed in early life; and she may have the pain and torture of knowing that he does so.

  Charles Dickens

  Children, Pain, Men

  "Oliver Twist".

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• In early life I had felt a strong desire to devote myself to the experimental study of nature; and, happening to see a glass containing some camphor, portions of which had been caused to condense in very beautiful crystals on the illuminated side, I was induced to read everything I could obtain respecting the chemical and mechanical influences of light, adhesion, and capillary attraction.

  John William Draper

  Beautiful, Nature, Strong

  John William Draper (1973). “Scientific memoirs, being experimental contributions to a knowledge of radiant energy”, Ayer Co Pub

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• In my early life my mother tried to create a nurturing environment in which my mind could play. Her big rule was "Never lose in your imagination." She told me that thoughts were things and that I would become the thing I thought of most. This kind of empowerment is crucial to creative thinking.

  Joey Reiman

  Mother, Thinking, Play

  Joey Reiman (2001). “Thinking for a Living: Creating Ideas That Revitalize Your Business, Career, and Life”, p.141, Taylor Trade Publishing

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• When we notice a connection between our present fears and their origins in early life, we are finding out how much of our identity is designed by fear. Is fear the architect of me?

  David Richo

  Fear, Identity, Connections

  David Richo (2014). “When Love Meets Fear: How to Become Defense-less and Resource-full”, p.39, Paulist Press

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• For me Oliver Twist is a political novel. It is a furious critique of the treatment of orphans and poor children who were forced to spend their early lives in ghastly institutions.

  Henning Mankell

  Children, Widows And Orphans, Political

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• The style of life is a unity because it has grown out of the difficulties of early life and out of the striving for a goal.

  Alfred Adler

  Goal, Unity, Style

  Alfred Adler (2013). “The Science of Living (Psychology Revivals)”, p.46, Routledge

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