#secret

For so long, it was just my secret. It burned inside me, and I felt like I was carrying something important, something that made me who I was and made me different from everybody else. I took it with me everywhere, and there was never a moment when I wasn't aware of it. It was like I was totally awake, like I could feel every nerve ending in my body. Sometimes my skin would almost hurt from the force of it, that's how strong it was. Like my whole body was buzzing or something. I felt almost, I don't know, noble, like a medieval knight or something, carrying this secret love around with me. ↗

— Carolyn Parkhurst

#identity-crisis #love #secret #unrequited-love #love

Then it dawned on me that men throughout the country had to know about nu shu (women's written word). How could they not? They wore it on their embroidered shoes. They saw us weaving our messages into cloth. They heard us singing our songs and showing off our third-day wedding books. Men just considered our writing beneath them. It is said men have the hearts of iron, while women are made of water. This comes through men's writing and women's writing. Men's writing has more than 50,000 characters, each uniquely different, each with deep meanings and nuances. Our women's writing has 600 characters, which we use phonetically, like babies to create about 10,000 words. Men's writing takes a lifetime to learn and understand. Women's writing is something we pick up as girls, and we rely on the context to coax meaning. Men write about the outer realm of literature, accounts, and crop yields; women write about the inner realm of children, daily chores, and emotions. The men in the Lu household were proud of their wives' fluency in nu shu and dexterity in embroidery, though these things had as much importance to survival as a pig's fart. ↗

— Lisa See

#men

I'm not of the American ilk that, you know, your lover needs to be your best friend and know you inside out. I think he should know you well enough to please you. Otherwise, what secret will there be to tell him when you're ninety? ↗

— Padma Lakshmi

#best #best friend #enough #friend #him

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion. ↗

— Doris Lessing

#body #causes #change #changed #changes

There's one secret to hitting hard, and that is to completely dedicate your body. That's the difference between a man going forward and a man going backward, no matter how big he is. ↗

— Ray Lewis

#between #big #body #completely #dedicate

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad. ↗

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#cold #every #every man #his #knows

There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together. ↗

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#chance #depths #drops #emotion #full

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. ↗

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#disarm #each #enough #find #history

I've always believed in the adage that the secret of eternal youth is arrested development. ↗

— Alice Roosevelt Longworth

#always #arrested #arrested development #believed #development

Even a secret agent can't lie to a Jewish mother. ↗

— Peter Malkin

#even #jewish #lie #mother #secret