#rage

I had let it all grow. I had supposed It was all OK. Your life Was a liner I voyaged in. Costly education had fitted you out. Financiers and committees and consultants Effaced themselves in the gleam of your finish. You trembled with the new life of those engines. That first morning, Before your first class at College, you sat there Sipping coffee. Now I know, as I did not, What eyes waited at the back of the class To check your first professional performance Against their expectations. What assessors Waited to see you justify the cost And redeem their gamble. What a furnace Of eyes waited to prove your metal. I watched The strange dummy stiffness, the misery, Of your blue flannel suit, its straitjacket, ugly Half-approximation to your idea Of the properties you hoped to ease into, And your horror in it. And the tanned Almost green undertinge of your face Shrunk to its wick, your scar lumpish, your plaited Head pathetically tiny. You waited, Knowing yourself helpless in the tweezers Of the life that judges you, and I saw The flayed nerve, the unhealable face-wound Which was all you had for courage. I saw that what you gripped, as you sipped, Were terrors that killed you once already. Now I see, I saw, sitting, the lonely Girl who was going to die. That blue suit. A mad, execution uniform, Survived your sentence. But then I sat, stilled, Unable to fathom what stilled you As I looked at you, as I am stilled Permanently now, permanently Bending so briefly at your open coffin. ↗

— Ted Hughes

#poetry-quotes #the-blue-flannel-suit #courage

He worked with her as she was and not as he wanted her to be. ↗

— Colin Clark

#encouragement #education

We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters. ↗

— Gloria Steinem

#courage #daughters #few #like #more

Universal suffrage is the only guarantee against despotism. ↗

— May Wright Sewall

#despotism #guarantee #only #suffrage #universal

That we cannot rise equal to situations when we are in them — that is the tragedy of life. ↗

— Henry Miller

#tragedy #equality

Since there are thousands of fairy tales, one may safely guess that there are probably equal numbers where the courage and determination of females rescue males, and vice versa. ↗

— Bruno Bettelheim

#courage

Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. ↗

— William Hazlitt

#poetry #tragedy #writing #equality

There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.' No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster. ↗

— Dalai Lama XIV

#life #pain #strength #tragedy #experience

No matter how long you train someone to be brave, you never know if they are or not until something real happens. ↗

— Veronica Roth

#bravery #courage #dauntless #experience #life

You are not a victim. No matter what you have been through, you're still here. You may have been challenged, hurt, betrayed, beaten, and discouraged, but nothing has defeated you. You are still here! You have been delayed but not denied. You are not a victim, you are a victor. You have a history of victory. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#betrayed #challenged #defeated #denied #destiny