Jessica Mitford Quotes

#1. He played Sarah McLachlan. For the rest of my life whenever I'd get a latte or see a sick dog, I'd think about my hymen.

Matt Fraction

#2. Prison walls are meant not only to keep convicts in, but to keep the would-be investigator out.

Jessica Mitford

#3. Objectivity? I always have an objective.

Jessica Mitford

#4. Lifelong enemies are, I think, as hard to make and as important to one's well-being as lifelong friends.

Jessica Mitford

#5. Now there is a society where the funeral industry got completely out of control.

Jessica Mitford

#6. I have had some sorry-ass looks, but I'm the first one to laugh. I'm either to credit or to blame for the '80s.

Jon Bon Jovi

#7. THE KEY TO GENERATING LOYALTY AND RISING ABOVE THE GENERAL NOISE SEEMS TO BE ALL ABOUT CREATING AN AUTHENTIC VOICE.

Richard Branson

#8. The character and mentality of the keepers may be of more importance in understanding prisons than the character and mentality of the kept.

Jessica Mitford

#9. The prison system, inherently unjust and inhumane, is the ultimate expression of injustice and inhumanity in the society at large.

Jessica Mitford

#10. You'd be surprised how far away half dead is from fully dead,

Simone Elkeles

#11. Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don't 'stand for election', they 'run for office.'

Jessica Mitford

#12. Ian cleared his throat. "Lady Elizabeth." He reached behind him and handed her a single red rose. "A rose... for the bonniest lass who ever graced the Highlands.

Victoria Roberts

#13. It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word travel is derived from travail, denoting the pains of childbirth.

Jessica Mitford

#14. Objectivity? I've always had an objective.

Jessica Mitford

#15. Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar

J.R.R. Tolkien

#16. Are you happy?" "Every time I think of him.

Jim Provenzano

#17. ...travel permits to Pyongyang were notoriously hard to get. In order to keep Pyongyang as a showcase city, the North Korean government restricted visitors.

Barbara Demick

#18. The 'economy' became a god such as never before, and a happy, successful society was one that could please this god - sometimes by sacrificing beautiful things - to keep the deity from getting angry and harming the people by withdrawing favours.

Michael Leunig

#19. [On the United States:] A nation which does not appreciate that the simple elocution exercise 'Merry Mary married hairy Harry' contains not one but three vowel sounds.

Jessica Mitford

#20. I discovered that Human Nature was not, as I had always supposed, a fixed and unalterable entity, that wars are not caused by a natural urge in men to fight, that ownership of land and factories is not necessarily the natural reward of greater wisdom and energy.

Jessica Mitford

#21. When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When "Somebody Up There" - a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator - so decrees.

Jessica Mitford

#22. Picking other people's brains is an art worth cultivating.

Jessica Mitford

#23. Enemies are, to me, as important as friends in my life, and when they die I mourn their passing.

Jessica Mitford

#24. I have nothing against undertakers personally. It's just that I wouldn't want one to bury my sister.

Jessica Mitford

#25. You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

Jessica Mitford

#26. Let your countenance be pleasant, but in serious matters let it be somewhat grave.

George Washington

#27. Things on the whole are faster in America; people don't stand for election, they run for office. If a person says he's sick, it doesn't mean regurgitating, it means ill. Mad means angry, not insane. Don't ask for the left-luggage; it's called a checkroom.

Jessica Mitford

#28. Knowing few children of my age with whom to compare notes, I envied the children of literature to whom interesting things were always happening ...

Jessica Mitford

#29. Growing up in the English countryside seemed an interminable process. Freezing winter gave way to frosty spring, which in turn merged into chilly summer-but nothing ever, ever happened.

Jessica Mitford

#30. It is true that I have had heartache and tragedy in my life. These are things none of us avoids. Suffering is the price of being alive.

Judy Collins

#31. If we make sure we stay in a state of conscious alertness for the next synchronicity, our minds stay on the positive and off our fear and doubt.

James Redfield

#32. The antitheist is quick to excoriate all religious belief by generically laying the blame at the door of all who claim to be religious, without distinction. By the same measure, why is there not an equal enthusiasm to distribute blame for violence engendered by some of the irreligious?

Ravi Zacharias

#33. Gracious dying is a huge, macabre and expensive joke on the American public.

Jessica Mitford

#34. It's not your salary that makes you rich, it's your spending habits..

Charles Jaffe

#35. A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.

Jessica Mitford

#36. Society created the prison in its own image; will history, with its penchant for paradox, reverse those roles?

Jessica Mitford

#37. In childbirth, as in other human endeavors, fashions start with the rich, are then adopted by the aspirant middle class with an assist from the ever-watchful media, and may or may not eventually filter down to the poor.

Jessica Mitford

#38. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Where, indeed. Many a badly stung survivor, faced with the aftermath of some relative's funeral, has ruefully concluded that the victory has been won hands down by a funeral establishment - in disastrously unequal battle.

Jessica Mitford