“The King had every privilege except that of being at ease. Pompadour provided the atmosphere in which that final luxury was possible. She did not do this, as anyone who thinks about the matter for twenty seconds will know, by twenty years of rapt contemplation of the ceilings of Versailles. Indeed, Pompadour was not a physically ardent woman, and love-making tired her. After about eight years of their association Louis XV did not sleep with her… But it was to Pompadour that he talked, and it was to Pompadour that he listened.”

— Robertson Davies

Madame de Pompadour.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Robertson Davies 282

Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and nov… 1913–1995

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Madame de Pompadour (1954).

“Women are so often segregated to their sexuality, and how they appear. In fact, there’s a lot of talk, even now, I think in most jobs this is true…people will say, when a woman rises to power, they ask, ‘who did she sleep with?’ You know, it couldn’t possibly be about her acumen, it couldn’t possibly be about her intelligence. It’s got to be about her body, because that’s how women get ahead.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview at Chatelaine.com (February 2011) http://www.chatelaine.com/en/videos/26327--interview-with-jennifer-beals/

“It takes one woman twenty years to make a man of her son—and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him.”

Helen Rowland (1875–1950) American journalist

Overture: Prelude http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30630/30630-h/30630-h.htm#Page_20
A Guide to Men (1922)

“In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“The moon makes her circuit of the heaven in twenty-eight days plus about an hour, and with her return to the sign from which she set forth, completes a lunar month.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book IX, Chapter I, Sec. 5

“He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven. … He hasn’t seen her in twelve years. Now she’s twenty-two. It’s a real strange relationship. …This is a resource that you can either mine or not. It's not as blatant as we're talking about. You don't think about it that much. You don't immediately realize how old she was at the time. It would be subtle. She could talk about it. "I was jail bait the last time we were together." She can flaunt it at him, but at the same time she never says, "I was fifteen years old." Even if we don't mention it, when we go to cast the part we're going to end up with a woman who's about twenty-three and a hero who's about thirty- five.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

1970s

“Thus King Dolor's reign passed, year after year, long and prosperous. Whether he was happy — "as happy as a king" — is a question no human being can decide. But I think he was, because he had the power of making everybody about him happy, and did it too;”

Dinah Craik book The Little Lame Prince and his Travelling Cloak

Ch 10
The Little Lame Prince and his Travelling Cloak (1875)
Context: Thus King Dolor's reign passed, year after year, long and prosperous. Whether he was happy — "as happy as a king" — is a question no human being can decide. But I think he was, because he had the power of making everybody about him happy, and did it too; also because he was his godmother's godson, and could shut himself up with her whenever he liked, in that quiet little room in view of the Beautiful Mountains, which nobody else ever saw or cared to see. They were too far off, and the city lay so low. But there they were, all the time. No change ever came to them; and I think, at any day throughout his long reign, the King would sooner have lost his crown than have lost sight of the Beautiful Mountains.

“Athena's great problem was that she was a woman of the twenty-second century living in the twenty-first, and making no secret of the fact, either. Did she pay a price? She certainly did. But she would have paid a still higher price if she had repressed her natural exuberance. She would have been bitter, frustrated, always concerned about "what other people might think," always saying, "I'll just sort these things out, then I'll devote myself to my dream," always complaining "that the conditions are never quite right."”

Paulo Coelho book The Witch of Portobello

Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda, p. 11.
The Witch of Portobello (2007)

“When a woman reaches forty, she must wait twenty years for her husband to catch up.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Marriage

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