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Quote by Diana Trilling

“Whoever had known sexual jealousy, that most destructive of emotions-and this would be so for men no less than women-had known madness and had now to know sympathy for someone who had been carried by jealousy this one terrible step too far, to murder.”

Quote by Diana Trilling

Author

Diana Trilling was a prominent literary critic and essayist in the United States. Born on July 21, 1905, and passing away on October 23, 1996, she was known for her insightful analyses of American literature and her influential role in shaping literary criticism during the mid-20th century. more

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Book:Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

Source: Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

“The distinction that Jews have themselves always made between Jews of German origin and Jews of East European origin is as stringent as that between Boston Brahmin and Boston lace-curtain Irish, though much finer.”

Made Jew East Distinction Curtains Boston Lace Brahmins

Book:Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

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“Long-married couples balance their checkbooks as a substitute for love-making, or they refuse each other love by protesting one another's financial error or excess.”

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Book:Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

Source: Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

“Behind the contained and orderly lives we lead as members of the respectable middle class there's a terrible human capacity that may one day overwhelm any of us.”

Humans May Behinds Class Middle Terrible One Day Members Capacity Middle Class Respectable Orderly Human Capacity

Book:Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

Source: Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

“Where there are children, people become neighbors; they don't merely hold property adjacent to one another.”

People Children Property Neighbor

Book:Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

Source: Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

“Privacy, after all, was the most relative of privileges. It was granted us by society under ungenerous conditions, the most fundamental of them that whether for pain or profit, by design or accident, we not call public attention to ourselves.”

Pain Attention Conditions Design Fundamentals Privilege Profit Accidents Granted Privacy Relative

Book:Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

Source: Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

“In the bad sixties, when drugs came into widespread use among adolescents and when Scarsdale mothers developed the habit of not asking about each others children for fear of what they'd hear, one knew that they were speaking-or not speaking, keeping their unhappy silence-on behalf of stricken motherhood everywhere in the country.”

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Book:Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

Source: Mrs. Harris: the death of the Scarsdale diet doctor

“Wit isn't a useful instrument of defense; it may make a short-run appeal, but it creates a backlash- one saw this in the Hiss case and the Oppenheimer hearings; certainly one saw it in the trial of Oscar Wilde.”

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Author:Diana Trilling

“Nature is honest, we aren't; we embalm our dead.”

Book:Three plays

Source: Three plays

“Nobody is bound by any obligation unless it has first been freely accepted.”

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Book:Three plays on justice: Landslide. Struggle till dawn. The fugitive

Source: Three plays on justice: Landslide. Struggle till dawn. The fugitive