Ellen Goodman Quotes

Quotes about:

• Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.

  Ellen Goodman

  Jobs, Humor, Order

  34 Copy quote

• We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...not looking for flaws, but for potential.

  Ellen Goodman

  New Year, Drawing, Years

  75 Copy quote

• Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savour it.

  Ellen Goodman

  Ideas, Mindfulness, Savour

  Ellen Goodman (1986). “Close to Home”, Fawcett Books

  18 Copy quote

• There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over - and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives.

  Ellen Goodman

  Sad Love, Letting Go, Jobs

  "Ellen Goodman writes of letting go in her final column" by Ellen Goodman, www.washingtonpost.com. January 1, 2010.

  29 Copy quote

• I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.

  Ellen Goodman

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  40 Copy quote

• We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.

  Ellen Goodman

  Love, Forgiveness, Gratitude

  Ellen Goodman (1981). “At Large”

  42 Copy quote

• The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.

  Ellen Goodman

  Inspirational, Children, Struggle

  24 Copy quote

• Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential.

  Ellen Goodman

  Inspiring, New Year, Inspiration

  31 Copy quote

• It is, I suppose, the business of grandparents to create memories and the relative of memories: traditions. We want to lodge moments, like snapshots, in the fleeting video of time.

  Ellen Goodman

  Memories, Grandpa, Video

  4 Copy quote

• I vote because it's what small-d democracy is about. Because there are places where people fight for generations and stand for hours to cast a ballot knowing what we ought to remember: that it makes a difference. Not always a big difference. Not always an immediate difference. But a difference.

  Ellen Goodman

  Fighting, Differences, Knowing

  4 Copy quote

• I am a member of a small, nearly extinct minority group, a kind of urban lost tribe who insist, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, on the sanctity of being on time. Which is to say that we On-timers are compulsively, unfashionably prompt, that there are only handfuls of us in any given city and, unfortunately, we never seem to have appointments with each other.

  Ellen Goodman

  Cities, Faces, Tribes

  Ellen Goodman (1986). “Close to Home”, Fawcett Books

  5 Copy quote

• Statistically speaking, the Cheerful Early Riser is rejected more completely than a member of any other subculture, save those with boot odor.

  Ellen Goodman

  Morning, Cheerful, Odor

  Ellen Goodman (1986). “Close to Home”, Fawcett Books

  4 Copy quote

• It has begun to occur to me that life is a stage I'm going through.

  Ellen Goodman

  Life, Life Is, Stage

  Ellen Goodman (1986). “Close to Home”, Fawcett Books

  4 Copy quote

• This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage.

  Ellen Goodman

  Stories, Next, Generations

  "Spring cleaning our lives" by Ellen Goodman, www.sfgate.com. April 13, 2002.

  6 Copy quote

• How come pleasure never makes it on to... a dutiful list of do's and don'ts? Doesn't joy also get soft and flabby if you neglect to exercise it?

  Ellen Goodman

  Exercise, Joy, Lists

  10 Copy quote

• You can believe in women's rights without believing that every woman is right.

  Ellen Goodman

  Believe, Rights, Women's Rights

  4 Copy quote

• What advertisers call brand loyalty is merely the consumer's defense against the need to waste energy differentiating among things that barely differ.

  Ellen Goodman

  Loyalty, Energy, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• instant opinion is an oxymoron. You don't get real opinions in an instant. You get reactions.

  Ellen Goodman

  Real, Opinion, Reactions

  6 Copy quote

• Our 'mistakes' become our crucial parts, sometimes our best parts, of the lives we have made.

  Ellen Goodman

  Mistake, Sometimes, Made

  14 Copy quote

• I wonder whether our adoption of Shrink-ese as a second language, the move from religious phrases of judgment to secular words of acceptance, hasn't also produced a moral lobotomy. In the reluctance, the aversion to being judgmental, are we disabled from making any judgments at all?

  Ellen Goodman

  Religious, Moving, Acceptance

  7 Copy quote

• The great myth of our work-intense era is 'quality time.' We believe we can make up for the loss of days or hours, especially with each other, by concentrated minutes. But ultimately there is no way to do one-minute mothering. There is no way to pay attention in a hurry.

  Ellen Goodman

  Time, Believe, Loss

  Ellen Goodman (1990). “Making Sense”, Penguin Group USA

  4 Copy quote

• We criticize mothers for closeness. We criticize fathers for distance. How many of us have expected less from our fathers and appreciated what they gave us more? How many of us always let them off the hook?

  Ellen Goodman

  Mother, Distance, Father

  Ellen Goodman (1983). “At Large”, Fawcett Books

  13 Copy quote

• Forty is ... an age at which people have histories and options. At thirty, they had perhaps less history. At fifty, perhaps fewer options.

  Ellen Goodman

  People, Age, Fifty

  Ellen Goodman (1981). “At Large”

  13 Copy quote

• We want our children to fit in and to stand out. We rarely address the conflict between these goals.

  Ellen Goodman

  Children, Goal, Excellence

  Ellen Goodman (1990). “Making Sense”, Penguin Group USA

  4 Copy quote

• When you live alone, you can be sure that the person who squeezed the toothpaste tube in the middle wasn't committing a hostile act.

  Ellen Goodman

  Toothpaste, Middle, Persons

  Ellen Goodman (1986). “Close to Home”, Fawcett Books

  5 Copy quote

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