Handmaids Quotes

• Hunger is the handmaid of genius

  Mark Twain

  Genius, Hunger

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.141, Courier Corporation

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• For Mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.

  Thomas Bulfinch

  Allies, Literature, Virtue

  Thomas Bulfinch (2012). “Bulfinch's Greek and Roman Mythology: The Age of Fable”, p.7, Courier Corporation

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• Anger, even when it punishes the faults of delinquents, ought not to precede reason as its mistress, but attend as a handmaid at the back of reason, to come to the front when bidden. For once it begins to take control of the mind, it calls just what it does cruelly.

  George William Curtis

  Anger, Mind, Mistress

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• You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.

  Margaret Atwood

  Views, Pyramids, People

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• Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion...Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.

  Margaret Atwood

  Thinking, People, Way

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• There is more than one kind of freedom," said Aunt Lydia. "Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Freedom, Aunt, Anarchy

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.24, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?

  Margaret Atwood

  Want, Waste, Handmaids Tale

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.7, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Ignorance, Handmaids Tale

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.56, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Don't let the bastards grind you down.

  Margaret Atwood

  Graduation, Latin, Cheer Up

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.187, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Illegitimis non carborundum.
  Lat., Don't let the bastards grind you down.

  Joseph Stilwell

  Latin, Persistence, Grind

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• Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.

  Margaret Atwood

  Aunt, May, Ordinary

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.

  Margaret Atwood

  Self, Waiting, Speech

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.66, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends have been evasive about it, at the time.

  Margaret Atwood

  Love, Pain, Past

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.226, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.

  Margaret Atwood

  Irises, Clamor, Handmaids Tale

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.153, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• we lived in the gaps between the stories

  Margaret Atwood

  Stories, Gaps, Handmaids Tale

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.57, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil

  Margaret Atwood

  Betrayal, Evil, Doubt

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.193, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

  Margaret Atwood

  Space, White, People

  FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Jan 20, 2015

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• How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word.

  Margaret Atwood

  Taken, Handmaids Tale, Furious

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.46, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.

  Margaret Atwood

  Change, Mean, Handmaids Tale

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.211, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.

  Margaret Atwood

  Mean, Thinking, Accomplishment

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.73, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?

  Margaret Atwood

  Talent, Handmaids Tale

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Good luck is the willing handmaid of upright, energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.

  James Russell Lowell

  Character, Good Luck, Best Of Luck

  "The Works of James Russell Lowell".

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• The Cinderella of the church today is the prayer meeting.  This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with the pearls of intellectualism, nor glamorous with the silks of philosophy; neither is she enchanting with the tiara of psychology.  She wears the homespuns of sincerity and humility and so is not afraid to kneel!

  Leonard Ravenhill

  Prayer, Philosophy, Humility

  Leonard Ravenhill (2004). “Why Revival Tarries”, p.19, Bethany House

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• His time was past, her handmaid Irri declared. No man should live longer than his teeth.

  George R. R. Martin

  Past, Men, Teeth

  George R. R. Martin (2012). “George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons”, p.851, Bantam

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• Labor is the handmaid of religion.

  Charles Henry Parkhurst

  Labor

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