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Quote by Ruth Ward

“Often a child's very gifts (his great intensity of feeling, depth of experience, curiosity, intelligence, quickness-and his ability to be critical) will confront his parents with conflicts that they have long sought to keep at bay by means of rules and regulations. These regulations must then be rescued at the cost of the child's development. All of this can lead to an apparently paradoxical situation when parents are proud of their gifted child and who admire him are forced by their own repression to reject, suppress, or even destroy what is best, because truest, in that child.”

Quote by Ruth Ward

Work

The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

This book delves into the complexities of the psychological development of gifted individuals, examining the unique challenges they encounter as they strive to discover and express their true selves. more

Author

Ruth Ward

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“When you're young, you think of your parents with the simplest adjectives. As you get older, you add more adjectives and notice some of them contradict each other. He's tall. He's tall and strong. He's tall and strong and smart. He's tall and strong and smart but busy. He's tall and strong and smart but busy and aloof and judgemental. She's safe. She's safe and kind. She's safe and kind and caring. She's safe and kind and caring but sad. She's safe and kind and caring but sad and lonely and brittle. Maturity colonizes your adolescent mind, like an ultraviolet photograph of a vast cosmic nebula that turns out, on closer examination, to be a pointillist self-portrait.”

“Down by the lake Portia saw the pale green of her mother’s gown. She was with Papa, of course, and as Portia watched, he pulled her into his arms. They must be kissing, though she couldn’t see that far in the hazy light. Their bodies were so close together that they looked like one person. There was something about the way Papa held their mother tightly, as if she were very precious, that made Portia happy down to the bottom of her stomach. “What’s out there?” Emily said, coming up behind her. Portia pointed, even though ladies don’t point. “Ridiculous,” Emily said with a huff of disgust. “That’ll end in another baby, mark my words, Portia.” And it did.”

“And when I think my thinking rouses me to blame he who created me, And I gave peace to my children for they are in the bliss of the abyss Which surpasses all the pleasures of the world, And had they been born they would’ve endured misery”

“If it is your fault that your mother is miserable, it becomes a potentially fixable affront. Taking blame means that at least the hope of love is still there-all you have to do is deserve it.”

“Many daughters live out their lives avoiding or abiding or arguing with their mothers-burying the long-ago injury or insult or childhood deprivation under a blanket of forgetfulness-and not confronting it head-on. It's humiliating to remember the ways in which one demeaned oneself in order to prevent being in a mother's bad graces, the willingness to do anything in order to not be rejected, when rejection felt like death.”