#superiority

Every day confirms my opinion on the superiority of a vicious life - and if Virtue is not its own reward I don't know any other stipend annexed to it. ↗

— Lord Byron

#any #confirms #day #every #every day

There was no instruction to be thankful that the Christians were special people, chosen people. There was no nationalistic, political or ethnic superiority to be thankful for. ↗

— John Clayton

#chosen #christians #ethnic #instruction #nationalistic

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world. ↗

— Leonard Cohen

#refuge #sense #sleeping #superiority #world

Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him. ↗

— Romain Gary

#befalls #declaration #dignity #him #humor

Look in the mirror, and don't be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#either #equate #extended #intrinsic #look

Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#fundamentalist #got #haven #i #stuff

As she grew older, Maddy discovered that she had disappointed almost everyone. An awkward girl with a sullen mouth, a curtain of hair, and a tendency to slouch, she had neither Mae's sweet nature nor sweet face. Her eyes were rather beautiful, but few people ever noticed this, and it was widely believed Maddy was ugly, a troublemaker, too clever for her own good, too stubborn - or too slack - to change. Of course, folk agreed that it was not her fault she was so brown or her sister so pretty, but a smile costs nothing, as the saying goes, and if only the girl had made an effort once in a while, or even showed a little gratitude for all the help and free advice, then maybe she would have settled down. ↗

— Joanne Harris

#hypocrisy #labeling #prejudice #scapegoating #superiority

As for my own part I care not for death, for all men are mortal; and though I be a woman yet I have as good a courage answerable to my place as ever my father had. I am your anointed Queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything. I thank God I am indeed endowed with such qualities that if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place in Christendom. ↗

— Elizabeth I Tudor

#courage #death #defiance #dignity #good-governance

We have never understood why men mount the heads of animals and hang them up to look down on their conquerors. Possibly it feels good to these men to be superior to animals, but it does seem that if they were sure of it they would not have to prove it. Often a man who is afraid must constantly demonstrate his courage and, in the case of the hunter, must keep a tangible record of his courage. For ourselves, we have had mounted in a small hardwood plaque one perfect borrego [bighorn sheep] dropping. And where another man can say, "There was an animal, but because I am greater than he, he is dead and I am alive, and there is his head to prove it," we can say, "There was an animal, and for all we know there still is and here is proof of it. He was very healthy when we last heard of him. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#hunting #trophy #courage

This pre-eminence is something [men] have unjustly arrogated to themselves. And when it's said that women must be subject to men, the phrase should be understood in the same sense as when we say we are subject to natural disasters, diseases, and all the other accidents of this life: it's not a case of being subjected in the sense of obeying, but rather of suffering an imposition, not a case of serving them fearfully, but rather of tolerating them in a spirit of Christian charity, since they have been given to us by God as a spiritual trial. ↗

— Moderata Fonte

#empowerment #feminism #gender #inequality #men