No one has ever explained why it is that parents and guardians consider dull people such safe matrimonial investments for their young charges. Even granting the unsound assumption that dull people are more apt to be content with their own matrimonial fetters, they are certainly more apt to be the cause of discontent in others.

Alice Duer Miller

Categorized in : People Parent Causes

People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.

Alice Duer Miller

wall hate mean

It is always difficult for a woman to be grateful for a form of chivalry that seems to be based on the premise that she is a moron.

Alice Duer Miller

chivalry grateful form

Men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this . . .

Alice Duer Miller

emotional baseball men

In a world where England is finished and dead: I do not wish to live.

Alice Duer Miller

england wish world

Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us.

Alice Duer Miller

listening talking mean

It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its natural functions by artificial means. Thus we suppress the child's curiosity and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning he is offered special coaching for his scholastic difficulties.

Alice Duer Miller

education mean children

A child too, can never grasp the fact that the same mother who cooks so well, is so concerned about his cough, and helps so kindly with his homework, in some circumstance has no more feeling than a wall of his hidden inner world

Alice Duer Miller

wall mother children

No one really believes in equality who's on top.

Alice Duer Miller

equality believe

And now too late, we see these things are one:

Alice Duer Miller

sacrifice love-is art

Good manners are the techniques of expressing consideration for the feelings of others.

Alice Duer Miller

good-man army feelings

They make other nations seem pale and flighty,

Alice Duer Miller

men country thinking

People love to talk but hate to listen.

Alice Duer Miller

hate people

It's been my experience, Charlotte, that the crisis never comes as or when you expect.

Alice Duer Miller

charlotte crisis unexpected

Silences, as every observer knows, have strange characteristics all their own - passionate silences, and hateful silences, and silences full of friendly, purring content.

Alice Duer Miller

passionate silence friendly

Rare indeed is the nature that does not become a little more intense when its own affairs come under discussion.

Alice Duer Miller

affair doe littles

Hate is perhaps the most dynamic of all emotions - fear may immobilize, love may stay the hand, but hate urges to action.

Alice Duer Miller

hate may hands

When a woman like that whom I've seen so much, All of a sudden drops out of touch; Is always busy and never can, Spare you a moment, it means a man.

Alice Duer Miller

funny-friendship men mean

the strongest will is the will that knows how to bend.

Alice Duer Miller

adaptability strongest know-how

Love will not always linger longest with those who hold it in too clenched a fist.

Alice Duer Miller

fists love

Men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them particularly unfit for the task of government....Man's place is in the armory.

Alice Duer Miller

women emotional baseball