Private Life Quotes - Page 2

• Is it a coincidence that stories from the private life became more popular just as the grand hope for public redemption through revolution was beginning to sour? I witnessed a similar shift in taste in my own time. In the 1960s, while a hopeful vision of a just society arose again, countless poems and plays concerning politics and public life were written, read, and performed. But after the hope diminished and public life seemed less and less trustworthy, this subject was less in style.

  Susan Griffin

  Play, Hopeful, Vision

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• Conformities are called for much more eagerly today than yesterday... skeptics, liberals, individuals with a taste for private life and their own inner standards of behavior, are objects of fear and derision and targets of persecution for either side... in the great ideological wars of our time.

  Isaiah Berlin

  War, Tyrants, Yesterday

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• There are two very natural propensities which we may distinguish in the most virtuous and liberal dispositions, the love of pleasure and the love of action. If the former is refined by art and learning, improved by the charms of social intercourse, and corrected by a just regard to economy, to health, and to reputation, it is productive of the greatest part of the happiness of private life.

  Edward Gibbon

  Art, Two, History

  Edward Gibbon (2015). “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V1: the History Focus”, p.348, 谷月社

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• As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

  Karl Marx

  Life, Real, Party

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1975). “Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: collected works”

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• All I am in private life is a literary critic and historian, that's my job...And I'm prepared to say on that basis if anyone thinks the Gospels are either legends or novels, then that person is simply showing his incompetence as a literary critic. I've read a great many novels and I know a fair amount about the legends that grew up among early people, and I know perfectly well the Gospels are not that kind of stuff.

  C. S. Lewis

  Bible, Jobs, Thinking

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• When I sit down to write, which is the essential moment in my life, I am completely alone. Whenever I write a book, I accumulate a lot of documentation. That background material is the most intimate part of my private life. It's a little embarrassing - like being seen in your underwear It's like the way magicians never tell others how they make a dove come out of a hat.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Book, Writing, Underwear

  FaceBook post by Gabriel García Márquez from Apr 02, 2013

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• Washington, in fact, had very little private life, but was eminently a public character.

  Washington Irving

  Character, Littles, Facts

  Washington Irving (1857). “Life of George Washington”, p.3

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• The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing. It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects.

  Toni Morrison

  Zero, Taken, Writing

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• The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.

  Plato

  Justice, Champion, Short Time

  Plato (1959). “The Last Days of Socrates: Euthyphro, The Apology, Crito [and] Phaedo”

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• What, really, is wanted from a neighborhood? Convenience, certainly, an absence of major aggravation, to be sure. But perhaps mostof all, ideally, what is wanted is a comfortable background, a breathing space of intermission between the intensities of private life and the calculations of public life.

  Joseph Epstein

  Breathing Space, Aggravation, Absence

  Joseph Epstein (1979). “Familiar territory: observations on American life”, Oxford University Press

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• The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy,--more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sweet, Men, Enemy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.72, Penguin

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• What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindeness, personal dignity, even the sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience.

  John Stuart Mill

  Christian, Religious, Ideas

  "On Liberty". Philosophical work by John Stuart Mill, 1859.

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• Moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large.

  Plutarch

  Life, Men, Practice

  Plutarch (2015). “Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans: Top Biography”, p.591, 谷月社

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• Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Life, Office, Gentleman

  Ambrose Bierce (2012). “The Devil's Dictionary”, p.85, Courier Corporation

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• For some people it's real therapy to talk to journalists about their private lives and inner thoughts. But I would rather keep something to myself.

  Mick Jagger

  Real, People, Journalist

  "Mick Jagger Remembers". Interview with Jann S. Wenner, www.rollingstone.com. December 14, 1995.

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• A private Life is to be preferrd; the Honour and Gain of publick Posts, bearing no proportion with the Comfort of it.

  William Penn

  Comfort, Gains, Life Is

  William Penn (1782). “The Select Works of William Penn....”, p.153

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• No one really knows what mattresses are meant to gain from their lives either. They are large, friendly, pocket-sprung creatures that live quiet private lives in the marshes of Sqornshellous Zeta. Many of them get caught, slaughtered, dried out, shipped out and slept on. None of them seems to mind this and all of them are called Zem.

  Douglas Adams

  Mind, Friendly, Pockets

  Douglas Adams (2009). “Life, the Universe and Everything”, p.42, Pan Macmillan

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• If a man's public record be a clear one, if he has kept his pledges before the world, I do not inquire what his private life may have been.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Men, Political, Records

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• The state is based on this contradiction. It is based on the contradiction between public and private life, between universal and particular interests. For this reason, the state must confine itself to formal, negative activities.

  Karl Marx

  Life, Negative, Reason

  Karl Marx (1975). “Early writings”, Vintage

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• So, Mr. Chadband-of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave off, having once the audacity to begin-retires into private life until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade.

  Charles Dickens

  Character, Oil, Interesting

  Charles Dickens (1870). “Novels”, p.161

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• But the instinct of hoarding, like all other instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the institution of private property comes another institution-that of plunder and brigandage. In private life, no motive of action is at present so powerful and so persistent as acquisitiveness, which unlike most other desires, knows no satiety. The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got, and not till then.

  William Ralph Inge

  Powerful, Men, Average

  William Ralph Inge (1920). “Outspoken Essays”

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• It is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees.

  Oscar Wilde

  Food, Wine, Men

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.823, GENERAL PRESS

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• Family life is an encroachment on private life.

  Karl Kraus

  Life, Family, Privacy

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

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• People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing away the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Men, Yellow

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• I like to think the price I paid by being open about my private life helped.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Thinking, Literature, Paid

  "Redemption songs". Interview with Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2004.

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