Quotes About Society

Did they find something wanting in you, Gemma, at the party? You didn't speak too freely or behave…strangely?" I grew claws and bayed at the moon. I confessed that I eat the hearts of small children. I told them I like the French.

Gemma, you see how it is. They've planned our entire lives, from what we shall wear to whom we shall marry and where we shall live. It's one lump of sugar in your tea whether you like it or not and you'd best smile even if you're dying deep inside. We're like pretty horses, and just as on horses, they mean to put blinders on us so we can't look left or right but only straight ahead where they would lead. Please, please, please, Gemma, let's not die inside before we have to.

A pair of Blue Noses on the next bench glared their disapproval at Evie's knee-length dress. Evie decided to give them a real show. She hiked her skirt and, humming jauntily, rolled down her stockings, exposing her legs. It had the desired effect on the Blue Noses, who moved down the platform, clucking about the "disgrace of the young." She would not miss this place.

We're all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they'd like to be seen.

Because the pure girls get rescued. Mary Lou felt something she didn't let herself feel often. She was well and truly pissed off. Why do girls have to be all pure and innocent and good? Why don't guys have to be?

Why do girls always feel like they have to apologize for giving an opinion or taking up space in the world?

Why do girls always feel like they have to apologize for giving an opinion or taking up space in the world? Have you ever noticed that?" Nicole asked. "You go on websites and some girl leaves a post and if it's longer than three sentences or she's expressing her thoughts about some topic, she usually ends with, 'Sorry for the rant' or 'That may be dumb, but that's what I think.

Theta sat next to Memphis and watched Mr. and Mrs. Chan laughing about some private joke. They were a mixed couple, and they were happy. No one seemed to be bothering them. But they were also here in the few blocks of Chinatown. What happened when they crossed Canal Street into the rest of the city? What happened when they went out into the rest of the country?

Sometimes, I wish we were girls again, safe. Mabel snorted in contempt. When has it ever been safe to be a girl?

Nobody wants to be themselves. That's why there's TV. So you know what to want and who to be.

She didn't really understand. Few people did. Sex sold everything. It was in every advertisement, song, and Hollywood movie. Who was the freak who didn't want to make love?

The world expected girls to pluck and primp and put on heels. Meanwhile, boys dressed in rumpled T-shirts and baggy pants and misplaced their combs, and yet you were supposed to fall at their feet? Unacceptable.

They will drink their tea. Weight their words. Wear hats against the sun. squeeze their minds into corsets, lest some errant thought should escape and ruin the smooth illusion they hold of themselves and the world as they like it.

But more and more Memphis had begun to ask himself if there had ever been order, or if order was one more myth people repeated so they didn't have to think too much about the violence lurking just under the surface of every polite exchange, every façade of "civilization." And just whom did "order" serve?

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London is full of women of the highest society who have remained thirty-five for years.

Some women who married and also had lesbian relationships were genuinely bisexual. Many others married because they could see no other viable choice in the day.

Perhaps rage was an inextricable part of lesbian-feminism, because once these women analyzed the female's position in society they realized they had much to be furious about.

hey'd say that heterosexual women become feminists when they finally understand that society doesn't allow them to be complete and free human beings— but lesbians had always understood that. Feminists are finally realizing that sex roles dehumanize women— but lesbian had always understood that; they'd always refused to a cape the limitations and oppressions opposed by the womanly role.

France] may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant.

Why is it when a man gets mad, he's aaangry, but when a woman gets mad, it's just a tantrum?" She paused, struck by what he'd said.

Wilbur looked patently horrified. "Surely you wouldn't consider living on Suds Row," he said. Then he lowered his voice. "If the major won't marry you, I will." Lily was now exasperated as well as winded. "Of course I don't mean to live on the Row," she answered, ignoring Wilbur's whispered offer to make an honest woman of her.

Life would be only what they chose to make it, grappling within the straitjacket of society

Prior to deciding whether science intrinsically tells the truth, we must ask, again and again, whether it is possible, or prudent, to isolate facts from values. This is a crucial question to ask, because it bears upon the kind of progressive society we want to promote.

Dreiser's literary faults, it gives us to understand, are essentially social and political virtues.