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Brenda Ueland

Brenda Ueland Quotes

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Famous Brenda Ueland Quotes

“I hate orthodox criticism. I don't mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in straitjackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and weazening all vision and bravery.”

PeopleThinkingMeanSelfHateResultsConsciousnessVisionCriticismI HateBraveryOrthodoxUsualSelf ConsciousnessMatthewFussy
Book:If You Want to Write
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“Unless you listen, people are weazened in your presence; they become about a third of themselves. Unless you listen, you can't know anybody. Oh, you will know facts and what is in the newspapers and all of history, perhaps, but you will not know one single person. You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsPersonsFactsListeningThirdsNewspapersSingle PersonYour Presence
Book:Strength to Your Sword Arm: Selected Writings
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“I readan article by a highly educated man wherein he told with what conscientious pains he had brought up all his children tobe skeptical of everything, never to believe anything in life or religion or their own feelings without submitting it to many rational doubts, to have a persistent, thoroughly skeptical, doubting attitude toward everything.... I think he might as well have taken them out in the backyard and killed them with an ax.”

ThinkingMenBelieveWellsChildrenFeelingsMightPainFaithAttitudeTakenDoubtRationalEducatedArticlesSkepticismPersistentSkepticalBackyardsAnything In LifeEducated Man
Author:Brenda Ueland
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“To have the external pressure of a job removed is very astonishing. Your own will is now your only motor and it has no horse-power. Sometimes I think that perhaps the most competent business men, and lawyers and doctors, who must be at the office at nine o'clock every morning, do not realize this and take more credit for initiative and industry than they deserve. And it is why all the bright women of the world, who if more were expected of them, might do important work, but who instead have a chronic feeling of ineffectiveness and sloth.”

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Author:Brenda Ueland
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“Don't think of yourself as an intestinal tract and tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee. Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers.... Think if Tiffany's made a mosquito, how wonderful we would think it was!”

IfsThinkingMadeForeverWonderfulHuman NatureDrinkCoffeeNervesThink Of YouSkullsMessengersMosquitoesTiffany's
Book:If You Want to Write
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“We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first – at least, for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom.”

IfsThinkingShouldWritingFirstsUseLightImaginationEffortCreativeAliveWonderfulDutyProductsBlessingDisappearGenerousBoredomEnlightenedDisagreeHeartedDiscouragementAilmentsImpassionedLight Hearted
Book:If You Want to Write
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“The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny; whose attitude is: "Tell me more. Tell me all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out." And if you have no such friend,--and you want to write,--well, then you must imagine one.”

IfsThinkingKnowsWantFeelsWritingWellsImportantInterestingAttitudeTeacherImagineLove YouGood Teacher
Book:If You Want to Write
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“Now before going to a party, I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me... to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing or changing the subject. No. My attitude is: "Tell me more. This person is showing me his soul. It is a little dry and meager and full of grinding talk just now, but presently he will begin to think, not just automatically to talk. He will show his true self. Then he will be wonderfully alive."”

ThinkingKnowsTryingMindLittlesPersonsSoulSelfShowsPartyAttitudeAliveSubjectsAffectionArguingDryListenersTrue SelfRelaxationTalk To MeMy Attitude
Book:Strength to Your Sword Arm: Selected Writings
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