Elizabeth Janeway
Elizabeth Janeway
Elizabeth Janewaywas an American author and critic...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 October 1913
CountryUnited States of America
powerful differences people
Powerful people get away with things. That's one way to demonstrate their difference from the rest of us.
contemplative-life people upset
I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be. It's wonderful to have someone like that around, you always feel you can count on them. You can go away and come back, you can change your mind and your hairdo and your politics, and when you get through doing all these upsetting things, you look around and there they are, just the way they were, just being.
dog zoos taken
The surprise of animals... in and out, cats and dogs and a milk goat and chickens and guinea hens, all taken for granted, as if man was intended to live on terms of friendly intercourse with the rest of creation instead of huddling in isolation on the fourteenth floor of an apartment house in a city where animals occurred behind bars in the zoo.
powerful believe thinking
This is the power of the powerful to define, to structure, to say, 'This is the way the world works.' It's enormous power. Among the powers of the weak, I think the first one is the power not to believe the powerful.
civilization poet lumps
Poets are the leaven in the lump of civilization.
hurt ignorance stupidity
though we do not have many poets, we certainly have more than we deserve, for we deserve none at all. It is ourselves that we are hurting by our stupidity and ignorance of poetry ...
cohesion gravity mythology
Mythology is like gravity, inconvenient at times, but necessary for cohesion.
writing views government
If every nation gets the government it deserves, every generation writes the history which corresponds with its view of the world.
country past history
If history is really relevant in today's world, the proposition doesn't command much respect. Perhaps the past is a different country, but if so no one much wants to travel there.
family children father
Today, what most people live in, or with, is the less-than-nuclear family. Working fathers are absent from home during most of the day, the children are schooled outside it, and practically all women who work for money must go outside to earn their living.
chaos saved
We put up with a lot to be saved from chaos. We always have.
ideas acquiescence world
The greatest barrier to women's advance in the public world of action has been their acquiescence in the idea that they don't belong out there.
world ghost inarticulate
it is through the ghost [writer] that the great gift of knowledge which the inarticulate have for the world can be made available.
men scylla firsts
Man's world' and 'woman's place' have confronted each other since Scylla first faced Charybdis. ... if women have only a place, clearly the rest of the world must belong to someone else and, therefore, in default of God, to men.