Florida Scott-Maxwell
Florida Scott-Maxwell
Florida Pier Scott-Maxwellwas a playwright, author and psychologist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
children matter mother signs watches
No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
destroys life meant
Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you. It is meant to, and it couldn't do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition.
sacred sure
It is not easy to be sure that being yourself is worth the trouble, but we do know it is our sacred duty.
lions sound innocent
Making those we love happy sounds innocent as a dove, but it can be as destructive as a lion.
pain giving worry
One cannot be honest even at the end of one's life, for no one is wholly alone. We are bound to those we love, or to those who love us, and to those who need us to be brave, or content, or even happy enough to allow them not to worry about us. So we must refrain from giving pain, as our last gift to our fellows.
love-is law joy
I wonder why love is so often equated with joy when it is everything else as well. Devastation, balm, obsession, granting and receiving excessive value, and losing it again. It is recognition, often of what you are not but might be. It sears and it heals. It is beyond pity and above law. It can seem like truth.
daughter mother children
She [a mother] never outgrows the burden of love, and to the end she carries the weight of hope for those she bore. Oddly, very oddly, she is forever surprised and even faintly wronged that her sons and daughters are just people, for many mothers hope and half expect that their new-born child will make the world better, will somehow be a redeemer. Perhaps they are right, and they can believe that the rare quality they glimpsed in the child is active in the burdened adult.
eye flames wild-life
Another secret we carry is that though drab outside - wreckage to the eye, mirrors a mortification - inside we flame with a wild life that is almost incommunicable.
love-is love-relationship dare
One hardly dares to say that love is the core of the relationship, though love is sought for and created in relationship; love is rather the marvel when it is there, but it is not always there, and to know another and to be known by another - that is everything.
women play roles
It sometimes looks as though woman would not be woman unless man insisted upon it, since she tends so markedly to be just a human being when away from men, and only on their approach does she begin to play her required role.
way emptiness empty
In very truth the days are almost free, and if it is another way of saying that our lives are empty, well -- there are days when emptiness is spacious, and non-existence elevating . . .
order support doe
Order, cleanliness, seemliness make a structure that is half support, half ritual, and - if it does not create it - maintains decency.
differences serious unexpected
Difference of opinion has never been sufficiently appreciated. It is the unexpected, the unknowable, the divine irrationality of life that saves us.
pain sky worry
The enchantment of the sky, ever changing beauty almost ignored. Beyond words, without fixed form, not to be understood, or stated. It ravished away dullness, worry, even pain. It graces life when nothing else does. It is the first marvel of the day. Even when leaden grey it is still a friend, withdrawn for a time.