Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic
"Katherine Anne Porter" (p. 302)
American Fictions (1999)
The Good Wife.
The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)
Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic
"Katherine Anne Porter" (p. 302)
American Fictions (1999)
Eleanor Clift (1940) American journalist
Farewell to Hollywood's Great White House Romance (2016)
Context: It took her husband's long illness and her grace in caring for him to show her critics what she was made of. Rarely did she spend more than an hour or two away from him, and during the decade of his decline, she guarded his image, his legacy, and his dignity. As his cognitive powers slipped away, eldest son Michael reminded him that he used to be president. "How did I do?" Reagan replied, his characteristic humor and humility intact. In the 1994 letter to the American people in which the former president revealed his illness, he wrote, "I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience. When the time comes I am confident that with your help she will face it with faith and courage." In their life together, Ronald Reagan never worried about anything; Nancy worried about everything, carrying a burden few appreciated until the end. She didn't have his gift for storytelling, but she made sure all the parts were in place, and by honoring him, she was true to herself, a woman for all times.
Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer
Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1850s, Speech on the Dred Scott Decision (1857)
Context: There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope, upon the chances of being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. If he can, by much drumming and repeating, fasten the odium of that idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. He therefore clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the Dred Scott decision. He finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes ALL men, black as well as white; and forth-with he boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend it does, do so only because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with negroes! He will have it that they cannot be consistent else. Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer
Christie denied having made this remark, which had been attributed to her by her second husband Sir Max Mallowan in a news report (9 March 1954); according to Nigel Dennis, "Genteel Queen of Crime: Agatha Christie Puts Her Zest for Life Into Murder", Life, Volume 40, N° 20, 14 May 1956 http://books.google.com/books?id=p0wEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA102, she was quoting "a witty wife"; Quote Investigator reports on "An Archaeologist Is the Best Husband a Woman Can Have" as of uncertain origin. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/07/12/husband/ <br class="br">Disputed <br class="br">Variant: An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.
Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer
First published in The Southern Review (Spring 1939)
Source: The Company She Keeps (1942), Ch. 1 "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment", p. 5, first lines of novel.
“A woman loves to be obeyed at first, although afterwards she finds her pleasure in obeying.”
Robert Louis Stevenson book The Suicide Club
The Suicide Club, Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk.
The New Arabian Nights (1882)
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing
Cassandra (1860)