108+ Florence King Quotes On Slavery, Education And Religion

Florence King was an American writer and journalist best known for her acerbic wit and conservative views. She was the author of several books of non-fiction and fiction, including the novel Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady. King was a columnist for National Review magazine from 1984 until her death in 2016. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Florence King on slavery, education, religion.

Top 10 Florence King Quotes

1. A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt.
2. If you ever meet someone who cannot understand why solitary confinement is considered punishment, you have met a misanthrope.
3. Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.
4. If we define a misanthrope as 'someone who does not suffer fools and likes to see fools suffer,' we have described a person with something to look forward to.
5. The more immoral we become in big ways, the more puritanical we become in little ways.
6. Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.
7. True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories.
8. I have a professional acquaintance whose recent eyelid job has left her with a permanent expression of such poleaxed astonishment that she looks at all times as if she had just read one of my books.
9. Agoraphobia was my quirky armor against a gregarious America.
10. American couples have gone to such lengths to avoid the interference of in-laws that they have to pay marriage counselors to interfere between them.

Florence King Short Quotes

• If whisky or salt won't cure it, then to hell with it. I worry about important things.
• There's no national glue holding us together because somebody put too much pluribus in the unum.
• Time has lost all meaning in that nightmare alley of the Western world known as the American mind.
• He travels fastest who travels alone, and that goes double for she. Real feminism is spinsterhood.
• Families composed of rugged individualists have to do things obliquely.
• Judge not, lest ye be judged judgmental.
• Familiarity doesn't breed contempt, it is contempt.
• Real feminism is spinsterhood.
• The nice thing about Southerners is the way we enjoy our neuroses.
• It takes only one child to raze a village.

Florence King Quotes About Education

Showing up at school already able to read is like showing up at the undertaker's already embalmed: people start worrying about being put out of their jobs. — Florence King

We worship education but hate learning. — Florence King

We worship education but hate learning. We worship success but hate the successful. We worship fame but hate the famous. — Florence King

Florence King Quotes About Love

To me, elitism means a love of excellence and superiority, but America has declared war on both and developed a sick love of the lowest common denominator to make sure no-one becomes too fine for our touted democracy. We are almost at the point of regarding every virtue as elitist. — Florence King

Men are not very good at loving, but they are experts at admiring and respecting; the woman who goes after their admiration and respect will often come out better than she who goes out after their love. — Florence King

God may have loved the common people, but a trip to any shopping mall suggests that He made far too many of them. — Florence King

Florence King Quotes About Elitism

Chinks in America's egalitarian armor are not hard to find. Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism. — Florence King

Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty -- as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it. — Florence King

Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it. — Florence King

Florence King Quotes About People

My object is to live in a place that does not call itself 'the community with a heart.' I want one of those godforsaken towns where all the young people leave and the rest sit on the porch with a rifle across their knees. — Florence King

People are so busy dreaming the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be, that they're all asleep at the switch. Consequently we are living in the Age of Human Error. — Florence King

Insecurity breeds treachery: if you are kind to people who hate themselves, they will hate you as well. — Florence King

Why do I hate people? Who else is there to hate? — Florence King

Oppressed people are treacherous for the simple reason that treachery is both a means of survival and a way to curry favor with one's oppressor. — Florence King

Golf is an exercise in Scottish pointlessness for people who are no longer able to throw telephone poles at each other. — Florence King

I don't mind being regarded as perverted and unnatural, but I would die if people thought I was a Democrat. — Florence King

I simply like guns because you can't shoot people without them. — Florence King

Florence King Quotes About Life

The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners. — Florence King

Self-help books are making life downright unsafe. Women desperate to catch a man practice all the ploys recommended by these authors. Bump into him, trip over him, knock him down, spill something on him, scald him, but meet him. — Florence King

I do believe in reincarnation, but I do not believe there is life before noon. — Florence King

Florence King Famous Quotes And Sayings

Misanthropes have some admirable if paradoxical virtues. It is no exaggeration to say that we are among the nicest people you are likely to meet. Because good manners build sturdy walls, our distaste for intimacy makes us exceedingly cordial "ships that pass in the night." As long as you remain a stranger we will be your friend forever. — Florence King

In its purest sense, nicknaming is an elitist ritual practiced by those who cherish hierarchy. For preppies it's a smoke signal that allows Bunny to tell Pooky that they belong to the same tribe, while among the good old boys it serves the cause of masculine dominance by identifying Bear and Wrecker as Alpha males. — Florence King

"Very" is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen. For example, would you rather hear the mincing shallowness of "I love you very much" or the heart-slamming intensity of "I love you"? — Florence King

Of all the old maid's blessing, the greatest is carte blanche. Spinsterhood is powerful; once a woman is called "that crazy old maid" she can get away with anything. — Florence King

Kings and queens might do wicked things, but they don't nag. One thing I like about Bloody Mary: she never said a word about lung cancer. — Florence King

Time has lost all meaning in that nightmare alley of the Western world known as the American mind. We wallow in nostalgia but manage to get it all wrong. True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories... but American-style nostalgia is about as ephemeral as copyrighted d?j? vu. — Florence King

Southerners have a genius for psychological alchemy...If something intolerable simply cannot be changed, driven away or shot they will not only tolerate it but take pride in it as well. — Florence King

Each time a mediocre singer performs, he is saying, in effect, "This is good enough for you." The audience, thrust into that familiar American mood of knowing something is wrong but not knowing what it is, unconsciously absorbs the insult and projects it back onto the mediocre performer in the form of inattention, rudeness and noise. — Florence King

During the feminist seventies men were caught between a rock and a hard-on; in the fathering eighties they are caught between good hugs and bad hugs. — Florence King

Animal rights activists gives disillusioned feminists an excuse to go back to being women protecting wee creatures without compromising their radical credentials — Florence King

Now the only thing I miss about sex is the cigarette afterward. Next to the first one in the morning, it's the best one of all. It tasted so good that even if I had been frigid I would have pretended otherwise just to be able to smoke it. — Florence King

There is much to be said for post-menopausal celibacy. Sex is rough on loners because you have to have somebody else around, but now I don't. No more diets to stay slim and desirable: I've had sex and I've had food, and I'd rather eat. — Florence King

Let's bring back grandmothers! A real family consists of three generations. It's time Americans stopped worrying about interference and being a burden on the children and regrouped under one roof. — Florence King

Gradually my whole concept of time changed until I thought of a month as having twenty-five days of humanness and five others when I might just as well have been an animal in a steel trap. — Florence King

Owning your own home is America's unique recipe for avoiding revolution and promoting pseudo-equality at the same time. To keep citizens puttering in their yards instead of sputtering on the barricades, the government has gladly deprived itself of billions in tax revenues by letting home owners deduct mortgage interest payments. — Florence King

Any hope that America would finally grow up vanished with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity. Fundamentalism, with its born-again regression, its pink-and-gold concept of heaven, its literal-mindedness, its rambunctious good cheer... its anti-intellectualism... its puerile hymns... and its faith-healing... are made to order for King Kid America. — Florence King

Updike's style is an exquisite blend of Melville and Austen: reading him is like cutting through whale blubber with embroidery scissors. — Florence King

In other countries, congenital introverts simply remain introverts all their lives, neither advancing nor retreating, but America's commitment to extroversion as a national art form can abrade some naturally aloof personalities until they flower into deadly nightshade. — Florence King

The vitamin has been reified. A chemical intangible originally defined as a unit of nutritive value, it was long ago reified into a pill. Now it is a pill; no one except a few precise scientists define it as anything else. Once the vitamin became a pill, it became real according to the precepts of American Cartesianism: I swallow it, therefore it is. — Florence King

Those colorful denizens of male despair, the Bowery bum and the rail-riding hobo, have been replaced by the bag lady and the welfare mother. Women have even taken over Skid Row. — Florence King

Owning your own home is America's unique recipe for avoiding revolution and promoting pseudo-equality at the same time. — Florence King

because the theater lost a Barrymore every time a Southerner decided not to go on the stage, just about anything that comes out of a Southern mouth is bound to be a ringing line. — Florence King

Recently while browsing in a secondhand bookstore I bought a paperback copy of The Intellectual and the City, but I was unable to read it. When I got home I discovered that the original owner had highlighted the entire book - literally. Every line on every page had been drawn through with a bright green Magic Marker. It was a terrifying example of a mind that had lost all power of discrimination. — Florence King

Learn to spot and avoid "writer groupies." The writer's self-sufficiency and our love for our work tend to attract insecure people who never can get enough love. They grow jealous of our work and come to regard it as a rival. These people can destroy you, so kick them out of your life or don't admit them in the first place. — Florence King

The feminization of America has made emotions sacrosanct while condemning as cold and unfeeling rigorous concepts such as duty andhonor. Propelled by incessant hosannas to woman's "finer" this and "softer" that, we make emotional decisions instead of ethical ones and then congratulate ourselves for having "heart. — Florence King

Spinsterhood is Nature's Own Feminism. — Florence King

There is more sexism in a year's worth of movies than actually exists in a woman's entire lifetime. — Florence King

I wasn't used to children and they were getting on my nerves. Worse, it appeared that I was a child, too. I hadn't known that before; I thought I was just short. — Florence King

There is nothing wrong with "women's studies" that studying the right women can't cure, but feminist literary scholars have a penchant for dragging the rivers of deserved obscurity for third-rate neurotics. — Florence King

Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down. — Florence King

Episcopalians have always preferred the flying buttress to the pillar of the church. — Florence King

It's the Government's job to print the money, deliver the mail and declare war. Now give me my cigarettes. — Florence King

In Mississippi the important thing is hooch, not bar equipment. — Florence King

Real feminism is spinsterhood. It's time America admitted that old maids give all women a good name. — Florence King

A cardinal rule of writing is never interrupt yourself to explain something. If you must bring up an obscure topic, drop informative hints about it as you go along so that you don't end up with the entire explanation all in one place. This keeps you from skidding to a stop and sounding teacherish. Otherwise it's better to omit the obscure topic altogether, or as mothers might put it: if you can't say it interestingly, don't say it at all. — Florence King

America is the only country in the world where you can suffer culture shock without leaving home. — Florence King

The proliferation of support groups suggests to me that too many Americans are growing up in homes that do not contain a grandmother. A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt and Helpists know it. They have jumped into the void left by the disappearance of morbid old ladies from the bosom of the American family. — Florence King

The proliferation of support groups suggests to me that too many Americans are growing up in homes that do not contain a grandmoth. — Florence King

Any discussion of the problems of being funny in America will not make sense unless we substitute the word wit for humor. Humor inspires sympathetic good-natured laughter and is favored by the healing-power gang. Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down. — Florence King

The Apologizer Bunny keeps going and going and going. — Florence King

Randian heroes come off as metaphors for Jews because they are beset by irrational forces that try to bar them from the professions and use their virtues against them to bring about their destruction. — Florence King

Southerners are so devoted to genealogy that we see a family tree under every bush. — Florence King

Americans are so emotionally fragile that soon we will have to be carried around in plastic bubbles and fed with an eye-dropper. — Florence King

The joker in the deck of lesbian fidelity is female vanity: no woman of fifty is going to undress in front of a woman of twenty no matter how much she might lust for her. — Florence King

One of life's intriguing paradoxes is that hierarchical social order makes cheap rents and outré artists' colonies possible. Raffish bohemian neighborhoods flourished in the days of racial segregation; under integration the artistic poor have no safe places in which to create.... If America lacks a vigorous culture it is partly because studios and ateliers have become crack houses. — Florence King

Resistance to team play seemed to pour like wet cement through my bones, displacing supple marrow, until I was ballasted with my own contempt. — Florence King

America is not a democracy, it's an absolute monarchy ruled by King Kid. In a nation of immigrants, the child is automatically more of an American than his parents. Americans regard children as what Mr. Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs called betters. Aping their betters, American adults do their best to turn themselves into children. Puerility exercises droit de seigneur everywhere. — Florence King

I'm for prayer in the schools because ritual and ceremony are calming and civilizing, and the little fartlings should be tamped down whenever possible. — Florence King

No matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street — Florence King

Keep dating and you will become so sick, so badly crippled, so deformed, so emotionally warped and mentally defective that you will marry anybody. — Florence King

Americans respect talent only insofar as it leads to fame, and we reserve our most fervent admiration for famous people who destroy their lives as well as their talent. The fatal flaws of Elvis, Judy, and Marilyn register much higher on our national applause meter than their living achievements. In Amerca, talent is merely a tool for becoming famous in life so you can become more famous in death - where all are equal. — Florence King

Never look on the bright side. The glare is blinding. — Florence King

I cherish the review-as-literature; as lapidary journalism in the eighteenth-century mode, the last hard sparkling diamond in theessayists's tarnished crown. To me, writing a good review is not just a way to make extra money, but a sacred duty. — Florence King

For men who want to flee Family Man America and never come back, there is a guaranteed solution: homosexuality is the new French Foreign Legion. — Florence King

to a Southerner it is faux pas, not sins, that matter in this world. — Florence King

I don't suffer fools, and I like to see fools suffer. — Florence King

Thank God I'm over the hill. The only heat I have left comes from hot flashes, my promiscuity is confined to the words "one size fits all," and I buy my white cotton unmentionables at Boadicea's Retreat, not Victoria's Secret. None of the things men do to women could possibly happen to me now unless the U.S. is invaded by one of those new Russian republics whose soldiers aren't fussy. — Florence King

I've always said that next to Imperial China, the South is the best place in the world to be an old lady. — Florence King

When women talk about "privacy" they mean abortion rights, and the millions of words feminists have written about "a room of one'sown" refer to psychological space, rarely to physical solitude. For most women being alone is tantamount to being deserted. — Florence King

There's something unrefined about a reading woman, they always reek of the lamp. How can she grow up to be a lady if she's always got her nose in a book? Granny Rudin — Florence King

We want a president who is as much like an American tourist as possible. Someone with the same goofy grin, the same innocent intentions, the same naive trust; a president with no conception of foreign policy and no discernible connection to the U.S. government, whose Nice Guyism will narrow the gap between the U.S. and us until nobody can tell the difference. — Florence King

A woman must wait for her ovaries to die before she can get her rightful personality back. Post-menstrual is the same as pre-menstrual; I am once again what I was before the age of twelve: a female human being who knows that a month has thirty day, not twenty-five, and who can spend every one of them free of the shackles of that defect of body and mind known as femininity. — Florence King

In the last few years, race relations in America have entered upon a period of intensified craziness wherein fear of being called a racist has so thoroughly overwhelmed fear of being a racist that we are in danger of losing sight of the distinction. — Florence King

The American woman's concept of marriage is a clearly etched picture of something uninflated on the floor. A sleeping-bag withoutair, a beanbag without beans, a padded bra without pads. To work on it, you start pumping--what the magazines call "breathing life into your marriage." Do enough of this and the marriage becomes a kind of Banquo's ghost, a quasi-living entity. — Florence King

Familiarity breeds democracry. — Florence King

By sending the contradictory message that the famous are just plain folks on Mount Olympus, America has forged a relentless tension between loftiness and accessibility. Stir in the fact that the inborn talent and intelligence needed to achieve fame are immune to distributive tinkering by government programs and you have a definition of fame certain to produce envious rage: somebody screwed democracy. — Florence King

The copyeditor I drew was a brachycephalic, web-footed cretin who should have been in an institution learning how to make brooms. — Florence King

Nothing is more likely to start me screaming like a madwoman than New York in February with its piles of blackened snow full of yellow holes drilled by dogs. — Florence King

Life Lessons by Florence King

1. Florence King taught that it is important to be true to yourself and stand up for what you believe in, no matter what other people think.
2. She also emphasized the importance of having a sense of humor and not taking life too seriously.
3. Lastly, she believed that it is important to be kind and generous to others, and to always strive to be the best version of yourself.