Quotes from Lynn Cullen

but why should we have dominion? Are we better than the dog that stays by a master who forgets to notice him? Than the cat who lays the mouse at your door when she is hungry and could have eaten it herself? Than a horse who will keep galloping to please you until its lungs have given out?

Even scientific articles contributed to defining a woman's place. It wasn't just by happenstance that when Dorothy was photographed with David Bodian for Time magazine at the conference where they announced their independently made discovery, the photographer positioned Dorothy to look like she was a secretary taking dictation from Bodian. Although she'd unofficial made their discovery years before he did.

I am a poet. Words are my currency.

I was touched, he said quietly, by your remark about seeing one another's souls. Do you believe that's possible? First you must believe there is a soul. Do you? If by a soul one means the creature who lives within each of us, a creature born loving, born joyful, but who with each worldly blow shrinks more deeply into its shell until at last, the poor desiccated thing is unrecognizable even to its own self, yes. I do.

There is no more prideful creature than a man born poor.

The unspoken truth was that New Yorkers considered everyone in the world to be just a tad - well, more than just a tad, a lot more than a tad - old-fashioned compared with themselves.

People don't want to be titillated or frightened. They don't want to think.

There are so many ways in which our hours can be claimed each day. What a shame that we only have one life.

Pay attention to fate, Mrs. Osgood. It will always have the last word." I

Only the rich, he said not a little bitterly, can afford to act like income does not matter.

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you" — here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more.

To say that he 'nailed a subject's soul to the canvas' makes the assumption that we persons, as well as artists, can see one another's souls. Maybe we do. Maybe we all have the ability to perceive another's soul, and do so every day, only we take it for granted, and don't even know it when we're doing it. We call it knowing someone's 'character' or 'personality.

In spite of Mr. Poe's fame, the pair made me feel out of sorts, and sad. In one of the busiest cities in the world, they seemed to exist on a bleak island of their own making, their backs turned against the social tide lapping at the battered door.

First you must believe there is a soul.... If by a soul one means the creature who lives within each of us, a creature born loving, born joyful, but who with each worldly blow shrinks more deeply into its shell until at last, the poor desiccated thing is unrecognizable even to its own self, yes. I do.

Pay attention to fate.... It will always have the last word.

How quickly the world changes, yet we are so busy trying to live that we don't notice it. And yet, it does not change quickly enough.

The commonplace deserves every bit as much attention as the sublime.

Desire inspires us to be our very best.

History has a way of forgetting the mistresses of great men. Even if they have talent.

Is there an aphrodisiac more powerful than forbidden fruit hanging just out of reach?

It is my belief that marriage is made holy by two souls in communion, not by the order of the law.

He was as uncontainable as a handful of water: if you squeezed, it trickled away.

You were right to insist that we invest in the beds. I don't know why we did not jump on getting them sooner. She knew why. A woman, Dr. Jesse Wright invented them. And much like Sister Kenny's method for rehabilitating polio patients, her idea was scorned until enough men embraced it.

Why are we doomed to crave most that which we cannot have?