Middle Quotes - Page 6

• Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.

  Benjamin Spock

  Class, Ideas, Racism

  "Decent and Indecent: Our Personal and Political Behavior". Book by Benjamin Spock, p. 103, 1970.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.

  Gloria Steinem

  Class, Planning Ahead, Goal

  Gloria Steinem (2012). “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, p.272, Open Road Media

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the tendency of the social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme.

  William Graham Sumner

  Crush, Class, Organization

  William Graham Sumner (1943). “The Forgotten Man's Almanac: Rations of Common Sense from William Graham Sumner”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• We had a week off in the middle of shooting, but as soon as everyone stopped, we all went down with six different types of flu and other unmentionable diseases.

  Johnny Vegas

  Different, Shooting, Disease

  25 Copy quote

• Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.

  Gore Vidal

  Sex, Age, Sexuality

  8 Copy quote
• 

  The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Happy Birthday, Growing Up

  "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" (1894)

  91 Copy quote

  Show source

• For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

  Hermann Hesse

  Class, Optimism, Contentment

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.27, Macmillan

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Life, Wise, Wisdom

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings”, p.60, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

  Sylvia Plath

  Ideas, Feminism, Age

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.328, Anchor

  120 Copy quote

  Show source

• No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.

  Florida Scott-Maxwell

  Family, Mothers Day, Mom

  Measure of my Days (1968) p. 16

  37 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a man's middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.

  E. B. White

  Men, Years, Age

  The Second Tree from the Corner 'A Weekend with the Angels'

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• We in middle age require adventure.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Travel, Adventure, Age

  6 Copy quote

• Youth is a silly, vapid state, Old age with fears and ills is rife, This simple boon I beg of Fate - A thousand years of Middle Life.

  Carolyn Wells

  Stupid, Silly, Fate

  21 Copy quote

• Biography can be the most middle-class of all forms, the judgment of little people avenging themselves on the great.

  Edmund White

  Class, People, Avenging

  Self-interview, Dalkey Archive Press, 1994.

  84 Copy quote

  Show source

• Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death.

  Gerald Brenan

  Death, War, Age

  53 Copy quote

• I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.

  James Ellroy

  Hurt, Stress, Writing

  James Ellroy (2012). “Conversations with James Ellroy”, p.55, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• My childhood is completely... when I look back, it was '50s in New York, upper-middle class, it was completely idyllic and golden and wonderful - sweet in every way.

  Peter Jurasik

  Sweet, New York, Class

  Interview with Ken P., www.ign.com. November 18, 2002.

  84 Copy quote

  Show source

• That just seems like a tough thing to do... just work in the middle of a company for your entire life. You just do the same thing out of college until you're 60, and then you retire

  Luke Wilson

  Work, College, Tough

  7 Copy quote

• It's no longer an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species.

  Arianna Huffington

  Exaggeration Is, Class, Endangered Species

  Arianna Huffington (2010). “Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream”, p.4, Broadway Books

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it.

  William Shenstone

  Law, Break Through, Texture

  'Essays on Men, Manners, and Things' 'On Politics' in 'Works' (1764) vol. 2.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• You will go most safely in the middle.

  Ovid

  Safety

  Metamorphoses bk. 2, l. 137

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the family sandwich, the older people and the younger ones can recognize one another as the bread. Those in the middle are, for a time, the meat.

  Anna Quindlen

  People, Meat, Sandwiches

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Living Out Loud”, p.239, Ballantine Books

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I get involved in the beginning, less in the middle, and very much at the end.

  Diane Sawyer

  Ends, Get Involved, Involved

  8 Copy quote

• It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.

  Marianne Moore

  Human Nature, Indecision, Mankind

  Marianne Moore, Robin G. Schulze (2002). “Becoming Marianne Moore: The Early Poems, 1907-1924”, p.102, Univ of California Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• A Prayer
  Refuse to fall down
  If you cannot refuse to fall down,
  refuse to stay down.
  If you cannot refuse to stay down,
  lift your heart toward heaven,
  and like a hungry beggar,
  ask that it be filled.
  You may be pushed down.
  You may be kept from rising.
  But no one can keep you from lifting your heart
  toward heaven
  only you.
  It is in the middle of misery
  that so much becomes clear.
  The one who says nothing good
  came of this,
  is not yet listening.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Prayer, Fall, Heart

  234 Copy quote