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Quote by Shirley Hazzard

Work

The Evening of the Holiday: A Novel

This novel delves into the complexities of family dynamics and cultural heritage during a festive evening. It examines the interplay between tradition and personal growth, as characters navigate their relationships and the passage of time. more

Author

Shirley Hazzard
Shirley Hazzard

Shirley Hazzard was a distinguished American author of New Zealand birth, known for her nuanced psychological portraits and profound historical settings. Her works often explore the relationship between individuals and history, as well as the impact of war and conflict on the human psyche. Hazzard's literary career began in the 1950s, with her short story collection 'The Bay of Noon' published in 1954. more

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“When I read of the vain discussions of the present day about the Virgin Birth and other old dogmas which belong to the past, I feel how great the need is still of a real interest in the religion which builds up character, teaches brotherly love, and opens up to the seeker such a world of usefulness and the beauty of holiness.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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!”