“It’s very important to be able to accept things, you know. Gracious acceptance is an art – an art which most of never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving.”

— Alexander McCall Smith

Love Over Scotland, chapter 112.
The 44 Scotland Street series

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Alexander McCall Smith 55

British writer 1948

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

“He taught us the art of unqualified love. How to give it, how to accept it. Where there is that, most other pieces fall into place.”

John Grogan (1958) American journalist

Source: Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog

“You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

“The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

"How Writing is Written," Choate Literary Magazine (February 1935)
How Writing Is Written: Previously Uncollected Writings, vol.II (1974)

“Once upon a time men resisted the implications of actuality. That day is gone. We know now that art is the thing itself together with its extensions into superfluity. Not pop art, I hasten to say, which sneers and exaggerates. This is popular art, which simply exists. This is the age in which we unconditionally accept the unacceptable, and thus proclaim the naturalness of our artificiality.”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 28 (p. 187)

“How can you [accept] exploitation?' 'How can you like the complete mechanization of work?' 'How can you like bad art?' I have to answer that I accept it as being there, in the world.”

Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) American pop artist

Source: 1960's, What is Pop Art? Interviews with eight painters' (1963), pp. 25-27

“What do you think it is that drives people to want far more than they could ever use or need? I frankly think it's insecurity. How do we let the world know that the trappings of this life are not the things that are ultimately important for being accepted?”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2006/commentary06012002.htm

“We do not know what death is. If we know so little about life which we have experienced, how shall be know about death which we have not — and in the nature of things never can?”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

“Why do we think that arts are leisure? Why isn't it arts and science or arts and the most important thing in your life?”

Julie Taymor (1952) American film and theatre director

Bill Moyers interview (2002)
Context: I used to say that arts were talked about in the arts and leisure page. Now, why would it be arts and leisure? Why do we think that arts are leisure? Why isn't it arts and science or arts and the most important thing in your life? I think that art has become a big scarlet letter in our culture.
It's a big "A." And it says, you are an elitist, you're effete, or whatever those things... do you know what I mean? It means you don't connect. And I don't believe that. I think we've patronized our audiences long enough.
You can do things that would bring people to another place and still get someone on a very daily mundane moving level but you don't have to separate art from the masses.

“We will never agree to give up Jerusalem, a united city under Israeli sovereignty, and only Israeli. We will not accept a terrorist Palestinian state, we will not accept an agreement based on the 67 lines.”

Naftali Bennett (1972) Prime Minister of Israel

2014 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/176036

“It’s very important to be able to accept things, you know. Gracious acceptance is an art – an art which most of never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving.”

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Alexander McCall Smith 55

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