Alice Duer Miller Quotations

I was not out to paint beautiful pictures; even painting good pictures was not important to me. I wanted only to help the truth burst forth.

When a woman like that whom I've seen so much, All of a sudden drops out of touch; Is always busy and never can, Spare you a moment, it means a man.

A child too, can never grasp the fact that the same mother who cooks so well, is so concerned about his cough, and helps so kindly with his homework, in some circumstance has no more feeling than a wall of his hidden inner world

In a world where England is finished and dead: I do not wish to live.

It is always difficult for a woman to be grateful for a form of chivalry that seems to be based on the premise that she is a moron.

People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.

No one really believes in equality who's on top.

Hate is perhaps the most dynamic of all emotions - fear may immobilize, love may stay the hand, but hate urges to action ...

Rare indeed is the nature that does not become a little more intense when its own affairs come under discussion.

Silences, as every observer knows, have strange characteristics all their own - passionate silences, and hateful silences, and silences full of friendly, purring content.

It's been my experience, Charlotte, that the crisis never comes as or when you expect.

People love to talk but hate to listen.

They make other nations seem pale and flighty, But they do think England is God almighty, And you must remind them now and then That other countries breed other men.

Men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this . . .

It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its natural functions by artificial means. Thus we suppress the child's curiosity and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning he is offered special coaching for his scholastic difficulties.

No one has ever explained why it is that parents and guardians consider dull people such safe matrimonial investments for their young charges. Even granting the unsound assumption that dull people are more apt to be content with their own matrimonial fetters, they are certainly more apt to be the cause of discontent in others.

the strongest will is the will that knows how to bend.

Conversation is a partnership, not a relation of master and slave, as most people try to make it.

Love will not always linger longest with those who hold it in too clenched a fist.

Good manners are the techniques of expressing consideration for the feelings of others.

And now too late, we see these things are one: The art is sacrifice and self-control And who loves beauty must be stern of soul.