Lying is done with words, and also with silence.

—Adrienne Rich in Women and Honor

silence speech lying honor

About Adrienne Rich

Portrait of Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Cecile Rich (; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to...

More quotations from Adrienne Rich

The worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown.

—Adrienne Rich

I know of no woman—virgin, mother, lesbian, married, celibate, whether she earns her keep as a housewife, a cocktail waitress, or a scanner of brain waves—for whom the body is not a fundamental problem: its clouded meanings, its fertility, its desire, its so-called frigidity, its bloody speech, its silences, its changes and mutilations, its rapes and ripenings.

—Adrienne Rich

women self-image body problems

O you who love clear edges more than anything… watch the edges that blur.

—Adrienne Rich

When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game done with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul—and not just individual strength, but collective understanding—to resist this void… and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.

—Adrienne Rich

War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation: thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes… as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to "feel good" about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.

—Adrienne Rich

war politics imagination memory people failure science

More quotations tagged with “honor”

Sometimes love does not have the most honorable beginnings, and the endings, the endings will break you in half. It's everything in between we live for.

—Ann Patchett in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotions. Looking back on it, I feel that I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three city districts. The Marines operated on three continents.

—Smedley Butler

The paths by which people journey toward happiness lie in part through the world about them and in part through the experience of their souls. On the one hand, there is the happiness which comes from wealth, honor, the enjoyment of life, from health, culture, science, or art; and, on the other hand, there is the happiness which is to be found in a good conscience, in virtue, work, philanthropy, religion, devotion to great ideas and great deeds.

—Carl Hilty in Happiness: Essays on the Meaning of Life

virtue health soul experience happiness enjoyment art work wealth honor philanthropy

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.

—Welsh Proverb

History

27 Oct 2013 Added