Handmaid Quotes

For Mythology is the handmaid of literature;

and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.

Illegitimis non carborundum. Lat., Don't let the bastards grind you down.

Anger, even when it punishes the faults of delinquents, ought not to precede reason as its mistress, but attend as a handmaid at the back of reason, to come to the front when bidden. For once it begins to take control of the mind, it calls just what it does cruelly.

Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion.

..Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.

Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.

We were the people who were not in the papers.

We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

Statistics has been the handmaid of science, and has poured a flood of light upon the dark questions of famine and pestilence, ignorance and crime, disease and death.

Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.

Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

Let flattery, the handmaid of the vices, be far removed .

Education should be the handmaid of citizenship.

A well-grounded assurance is always attended with three fair handmaids: love, humility and holy joy.

The past has always been the handmaid of authority.

I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something.

Nemesis is one of God's handmaids.

The drama embraces and applies all the beauties and decorations of poetry.

The sister arts attend and adorn it. Painting, architecture, and music are her handmaids. The costliest lights of a people's intellect burn at her show. All ages welcome her.

Nature, the handmaid of God Almighty, does nothing but with good advice, if we make research into the true reason of things.

Let flattery, the handmaid of the vices, be far removed (from friendship).

[Lat., Assentatio, vitiorum adjutrix, procul amoveatur.]

By viewing nature, nature's handmaid art, Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow: Thus fishes first to shipping did impart, Their tail the rudder, and their head the prow.

I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely.

We are a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.

Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to.

This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.

Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?

We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?

Useful knowledge, practical kindness, and beneficent laws -- these are not the Gospel; but, like philosophy, they are, or may be, its handmaids. They may make its task smooth and grateful; they may associate themselves with its victories, or they may prepare its way.

Don't let the bastards grind you down.

I repeat this to myself but it conveys nothing. You might as well say, Don't let there be air; or Don't be. I suppose you could say that.

I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.

we lived in the gaps between the stories

By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are. So I will go on. So I will myself to go on.

The way love feels is always only approximate.

I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.

By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being.

The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil

How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word.

I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.