The Excluded Sister Quotes

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When we define ourselves, when I define myself, the place in which I am like you and the place in which I am not like you, I'm not excluding you from the joining - I'm broadening the joining.
Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches)
But now she regarded her sister with curious distance. She'd been so actively excluded from everything important to her she felt suddenly, intensely alone.
Jennifer Vandever (American Tango)
People also often face prejudice as a result of other characteristics, such as age, class and religious belief. The principle of intersectionality is actually pretty simple: if all these different kinds of prejudice stem from the same root, then it is arbitrary and ineffective to attempt to eradicate one of them without acknowledging its intersection with others and trying to work together to tackle all forms of inequality. Or, from a feminist perspective, if we are to tackle the fact that women have been historically oppressed because of characteristics that are seen to be ‘different’ from the male norm, how can we protest such treatment while simultaneously excluding from our own movement the needs and agendas of those with other stigmatized characteristics? (This is particularly true in the case of our trans sisters, who some feminists believe should be excluded from some areas of the movement by virtue of not fulfilling required ‘characteristics’ of womanhood – a deep irony for a group fighting for equality regardless of sex.) And on
Laura Bates (Everyday Sexism)
Society is neither my master nor my servant, neither my father nor my sister; and so long as she does not bar my way to the kingdom of heaven, which is the only society worth getting into, I feel no right to complain of how she treats me. I have no claim on her; I do not acknowledge her laws--hardly her existence, and she has no authority over me. Why should she, how could she, constituted as she is, receive such as me? The moment she did so, she would cease to be what she is; and, if all be true that one hears of her, she does me a kindness in excluding me. What can it matter to me, Letty, whether they call me a lady or not, so long as Jesus says “Daughter” to me?
George MacDonald (Mary Marston)
My precept is, ‘Do something, my sister, do good if you can; but, at any rate, do something.’” “Not excluding mischief,” said Margaret, smiling faintly through her tears. “By no means. What I do exclude is the remorse afterwards.
Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South)
Smiling wistfully at the thought of her beloved sister, Daisy felt a wave of loneliness sweep over her. She and Lillian had always been together, arguing, laughing, getting each other into scrapes, and rescuing each other whenever possible. Naturally she was happy that Lillian had met her perfect match in the strong-willed Westcliff... but that didn't stop Daisy from missing her terribly. And now that the other wallflowers, including Evie, had found husbands, they were part of the mysterious married world that Daisy was still excluded from. She was going to have to find a husband soon. Some nice, sincere gentleman who would share her love of books. A man who wore spectacles, and liked dogs and children.
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
Questioner: Why do we love our mothers so much? KRISHNAMURTI: Do you love your mother if you hate your father? Listen carefully. When you love somebody very much, do you exclude others from that love? If you really love your mother, don’t you also love your father, your aunt, your neighbour, your servant? Don’t you have the feeling of love first, and then the love of someone in particular? When you say, “I love my mother very much,” are you not being considerate of her? Can you then give her a lot of meaningless trouble? And if you are considerate of your mother, are you not also considerate of your brother, your sister, your neighbour? Otherwise you don’t really love your mother; it is just a word, a convenience.
J. Krishnamurti (Think on These Things)
This time she paused to peer out of the window at the dusk and wonder where her sister was. Drowned in the lake, ravished by gypsies, struck by a passing motor car, she thought ritually, a sound principal being that nothing was ever as one imagined it, and this was an efficient means of excluding the worst.
Ian McEwan (Atonement)
So I really appreciate your coming to have this conversation,” the Dalai Lama said. “In order to develop our mind, we must look at a deeper level. Everyone seeks happiness, joyfulness, but from outside—from money, from power, from big car, from big house. Most people never pay much attention to the ultimate source of a happy life, which is inside, not outside. Even the source of physical health is inside, not outside. “So there may be a few differences between us. You usually emphasize faith. Personally I am Buddhist, and I consider faith very important, but at the same time the reality is that out of seven billion people, over one billion people on the planet are nonbelievers. So we cannot exclude them. One billion is quite a large number. They are also our human brothers and sisters. They also have the right to become happier human beings and to be good members of the human family. So one need not depend on religious faith to educate our inner values.
Dalai Lama XIV (The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World)
To pray, that is, to listen to the voice of the One who calls us the "beloved", is to learn that that voice excludes no one. Where I dwell, God dwells with me and where God dwells with me I find all my sisters and brothers. And so intimacy with God and solidarity with all people are two aspects of dwelling in the present moment that can never be separated.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
By looking after his relatives' interests as he did, Napoleon furthermore displayed incredible weakness on the purely human level. When a man occupies such a position, he should eliminate all his family feeling. Napoleon, on the contrary, placed his brothers and sisters in posts of command, and retained them in these posts even after they'd given proofs of their incapability. All that was necessary was to throw out all these patently incompetent relatives. Instead of that, he wore himself out with sending his brothers and sisters, regularly every month, letters containing reprimands and warnings, urging them to do this and not to do that, thinking he could remedy their incompetence by promising them money, or by threatening not to give them any more. Such illogical behaviour can be explained only by the feeling Corsicans have for their families, a feeling in which they resemble the Scots. By thus giving expression to his family feeling, Napoleon introduced a disruptive principle into his life. Nepotism, in fact, is the most formidable protection imaginable : the protection of the ego. But wherever it has appeared in the life of a State—the monarchies are the best proof—it has resulted in weakening and decay. Reason : it puts an end to the principle of effort. In this respect, Frederick the Great showed himself superior to Napoleon—Frederick who, at the most difficult moments of his life, and when he had to take the hardest decisions, never forgot that things are called upon to endure. In similar cases, Napoleon capitulated. It's therefore obvious that, to bring his life's work to a successful conclusion, Frederick the Great could always rely on sturdier collaborators than Napoleon could. When Napoleon set the interests of his family clique above all, Frederick the Great looked around him for men, and, at need, trained them himself. Despite all Napoleon's genius, Frederick the Great was the most outstanding man of the eighteenth century. When seeking to find a solution for essential problems concerning the conduct of affairs of State, he refrained from all illogicality. It must be recognised that in this field his father, Frederick-William, that buffalo of a man, had given him a solid and complete training. Peter the Great, too, clearly saw the necessity for eliminating the family spirit from public life. In a letter to his son—a letter I was re-reading recently—he informs him very clearly of his intention to disinherit him and exclude him from the succession to the throne. It would be too lamentable, he writes, to set one day at the head of Russia a son who does not prepare himself for State affairs with the utmost energy, who does not harden his will and strengthen himself physically. Setting the best man at the head of the State—that's the most difficult problem in the world to solve.
Adolf Hitler (Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944)
From other shelters, there were stories of singing “Deutschland über Alles” or of people arguing amid the staleness of their own breath. No such things happened in the Fiedler shelter. In that place, there was only fear and apprehension, and the dead song at Rosa Hubermann’s cardboard lips. Not long before the sirens signaled the end, Alex Steiner—the man with the immovable, wooden face—coaxed the kids from his wife’s legs. He was able to reach out and grapple for his son’s free hand. Kurt, still stoic and full of stare, took it up and tightened his grip gently on the hand of his sister. Soon, everyone in the cellar was holding the hand of another, and the group of Germans stood in a lumpy circle. The cold hands melted into the warm ones, and in some cases, the feeling of another human pulse was transported. It came through the layers of pale, stiffened skin. Some of them closed their eyes, waiting for their final demise, or hoping for a sign that the raid was finally over. Did they deserve any better, these people? How many had actively persecuted others, high on the scent of Hitler’s gaze, repeating his sentences, his paragraphs, his opus? Was Rosa Hubermann responsible? The hider of a Jew? Or Hans? Did they all deserve to die? The children? The answer to each of these questions interests me very much, though I cannot allow them to seduce me. I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that night, excluding the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the advice, my imagined feet walking into the kitchen and down the corridor. As is often the case with humans, when I read about them in the book thief’s words, I pitied them, though not as much as I felt for the ones I scooped up from various camps in that time. The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For those people, life was still achievable.
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
Feminist theory sometimes portrays men as being united with all other men in their common purpose of oppressing women. But the evolution of human mating suggests that this scenario cannot be true, because men and women compete primarily against members of their own gender. Men strive to control resources mainly at the expense of other men. Men deprive other men of their resources, exclude other men from positions of status and power, and derogate other men in order to make them less desirable to women. Indeed, the fact that nearly 70 percent of all homicides are inflicted by men on other men reveals the tip of the iceberg of the cost of competition to men. The fact that men on average die years earlier than women in every culture is further testimony to the penalties men pay for this struggle with other men. Women do not escape damage inflicted by members of their own sex. Women compete with each other for access to high-status men, have sex with other women’s husbands, and lure men away from their wives. Mate poaching is a ubiquitous sexual strategy of our species. Women slander and denigrate their rivals and are especially harsh toward women who pursue short-term sexual strategies. Women and men are both victims of the sexual strategies of their own gender and so can hardly be said to be united with their own gender for some common goal. Moreover, both men and women benefit from the strategies of the opposite sex. Men lavish resources and protection on certain women, including their wives, their sisters, their daughters, and their mistresses. A woman’s father, brothers, and sons all benefit from her selection of a mate who is flush with abundance. Contrary to the view that men or women are united with all members of their own sex for the purpose of oppressing the other sex, each individual shares key interests with particular members of each sex and is in conflict with other members of each sex. Simple-minded views of a same-sex conspiracy have no foundation in reality.
David M. Buss (The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating)
Before I knew it, the first animal had entered the chute. Various cowboys were at different positions around the animal and began carrying out their respective duties. Tim looked at me and yelled, “Stick it in!” With utter trepidation, I slid the wand deep into the steer’s rectum. This wasn’t natural. This wasn’t normal. At least it wasn’t for me. This was definitely against God’s plan. I was supposed to check the monitor and announce if the temperature was above ninety-degrees. The first one was fine. But before I had a chance to remove the probe, Tim set the hot branding iron against the steer’s left hip. The animal let out a guttural Mooooooooooooo!, and as he did, the contents of its large intestine emptied all over my hand and forearm. Tim said, “Okay, Ree, you can take it out now.” I did. I didn’t know what to do. My arm was covered in runny, stinky cow crap. Was this supposed to happen? Should I say anything? I glanced at my sister, who was looking at me, completely horrified. The second animal entered the chute. The routine began again. I stuck it in. Tim branded. The steer bellowed. The crap squirted out. I was amazed at how consistent and predictable the whole nasty process was, and how nonchalant everyone--excluding my sister--was acting. But then slowly…surely…I began to notice something. On about the twentieth animal, I began inserting the thermometer. Tim removed his branding iron from the fire and brought it toward the steer’s hip. At the last second, however, I fumbled with my device and had to stop for a moment. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that when I paused, Tim did, too. It appeared he was actually waiting until I had the thermometer fully inserted before he branded the animal, ensuring that I’d be right in the line of fire when everything came pouring out. He had planned this all along, the dirty dog. Seventy-eight steers later, we were finished. I was a sight. Layer upon layer of manure covered my arm. I’m sure I was pale and in shock. The cowboys grinned politely. Tim directed me to an outdoor faucet where I could clean my arm. Marlboro Man watched as he gathered up the tools and the gear…and he chuckled. As my sister and I pulled away in the car later that day, she could only say, “Oh. My. God.” She made me promise never to return to that awful place. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d found out later that this, from Tim’s perspective, was my initiation. It was his sick, twisted way of measuring my worth.
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
Because,' he said, 'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you, especially when you are near me, as now; it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situation in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and the nI've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.' 'That I never would, sir; you know -,' impossible to proceed. [...] The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway and asserting a right to predominate - to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last; yes, and to speak. 'I grieve to leave Thornfield; I love Thornfield; I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life, momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright, and energetic, and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence; with what I delight in, with an origin, a vigorous, and expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you forever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.' 'Where do you see the necessity?' he asked, suddenly. 'Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.' 'In what shape?' 'In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman, your bride.' 'My bride! What bride? I have no bride!' 'But you will have.' 'Yes; I will! I will!' He set his teeth. 'Then I must go; you have said it yourself.' 'No; you must stay! I swear it, and the oath shall be kept.' 'I tell you I must go!' I retorted, roused to something like passion. 'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automation? a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; it is my spirit that addresses your spirits; just as if both had passed through the grace, and we stood at God's feel, equal - as we are!' 'As we are!' repeated Mr. Rochester - 'so,' he added, including me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips; 'so, Jane!' 'Yes, so, sir,' I rejoined; 'and yet not so; for you are a married man, or as good as a married man, and we'd to one inferior to you - to one with whom you have no sympathy - whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union; therefore I am better than you - let me go!' 'Where, Jane? to Ireland?' 'Yes - to Ireland. I have spoke my mind, and can go anywhere now.' 'Jane, be still; don't struggle so, like a wild, frantic bird that is tending its own plumage in its desperation.' 'I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.' Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him. 'And your will shall decide your destiny,' he said; 'I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.' 'You play a farce, which I merely taught at.' 'I ask you to pass through life at my side - to be my second self, and best earthly companion.' [...] 'Do you doubt me, Jane?' 'Entirely.' 'You have no faith in me?' 'Not a whit.
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
How could anyone treat me as a person with a diseased mind if I thought that war need never come again—if only common people everywhere would take control of the planet’s wealth, disband their national armies, and forget their national boundaries; if only they would think of themselves ever after as brothers and sisters, yes, and as mothers and fathers, too, and children of all other common people—everywhere. The only person who would be excluded from such friendly and merciful society would be one who took more wealth than he or she needed at any time.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Jailbird)
Did you know that Oregon was the only state that began as whites only?” Agent McLane’s voice was low but clear and carried through the room. “The original state constitution excluded all nonwhites from living here.
Kendra Elliot (The Last Sister (Columbia River, #1; Callahan & McLane, #5))
When we define ourselves, when I define myself, the place in which I am like you and the place in which I am not like you, I’m not excluding you from the joining—I’m broadening the joining.
Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches)
another good neighbour they depended on. Emily felt as though Rita were her confidante, her best friend. More than that even, the older sister she had never had. Only a few years older than Emily, but already with a family of her own. Emily’s mother opened her eyes and smiled at Alfred. Emily felt a twinge of jealousy. Her ma and Alfred loved each other so much that Emily often felt excluded by their private exchanges. She dropped back to her knees by the side of the sofa. ‘Mam, are you all right?’ She was vying for her mother’s attention, dragging her away from Alfred and feeling guilty for it. ‘Oh, there you are, queen,’ her mother whispered, with a hint of surprise. ‘I must have known you were home. I’m glad I woke up. Could you just grab the coupons, love, and go down to the shop for me before the kids come home?’ ‘The kids are already home, love. They’ve gone straight to Rita’s,’ Alfred said, smiling at his wife. Rita’s little sons and their own were inseparable. ‘They’ll be back soon, queen. She took them straight from school.’ ‘It’s like we have four little boys, or none at all,’ Emily said, extracting the ration books from the drawer in the wooden kitchen table. ‘One day we’ll find out which ones are ours,
Nadine Dorries (The Angels of Lovely Lane (Lovely Lane, #1))
But then, on a brisk February evening my junior year, I attended a free yoga class at the Harvard Divinity School Andover Chapel. I came in fully expecting to do cat, cow, and child’s pose. Our instructor, Nicholas, who was also a graduate student there, had us on our backs with taut abs, legs held in the air in a ninety-degree position, neck lifted off the ground, hands stretched above our heads. I had become the sleeping dragon. One minute in, my body was trembling. You can’t. I told myself I could. You can’t. I opened my eyes and saw everyone else peacefully holding their pose. This voice yelling at me wasn’t my own. So where was it coming from? You can’t. It was Hang telling me to dump my elementary school best friends who still played with toy horses at thirteen. He said I needed to be more strategic about my social ranking. You can’t be friends with them. My sister excluding me from her life when we became teenagers. You can’t hang out with us. Ba calling me pathetic when I told him I wasn’t pursuing med school. You can’t even try because you’re too dumb. I screamed, You can’t, right back inside of my head, telling all of them what I never had the courage to say. My body shuddered as the rage escaped my body like bats flying out from a cave. Hot tears fell from the sides of my eyes into the chapel carpet floor. And then I heard a clear voice inside of me speak. It was not mine, it was someone else’s. “All those times you’ve felt unloved or alone, you weren’t. God, through the presence of the body, has always been there for you.” Who was this voice? And how could my body be the key to loving myself? My body was always something I had seen as an inconvenience, a detached thing I had to fix. But tonight, I felt welcome to get to know my body.
Susan Lieu (The Manicurist's Daughter)
Does pure love appear without sex? - The answer is yes, as with mother, sister, daughter, son, and such relationships, only not with a life partner (excluding exceptional circumstances) when one chooses someone who naturally breathes under the flames of sex.
Ehsan Sehgal
Ptolemy XIII was expected to accept as co-ruler the sister who had tried to exclude him from power
Adrian Goldsworthy (Antony and Cleopatra)
The message of omissions is an educational foundation of racism. Through the silence in our education, many of us have learned not to listen to the histories of color, women, and other excluded groups.
Sally Roesch Wagner (Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influences on Early American Feminists)
Only in the very extreme cases of our civilization can we find anything that covers the experiences of the ancients. For the innate depravity of shame lies in the fact that spiritual life was then dependent upon a certain number and a certain sort of ideas. Good breeding was a family treasure, possibly not differing greatly to our eyes as regards the different families, but in reality distinctively marked from earliest youth, stamped by traditions, determined by environment, and consequently not easily changed. Personality was far less mobile than now, and was far less capable of recuperation. If a kinsman lost an idea, he could not make good the loss by taking up ideas from the other side; as he is bound to the family circle in which he grew up, so he is dependent upon the soulconstituents fostered in him. The traditions and reminiscences of his people, the enjoyment of ancient heirlooms and family property, the consciousness of purpose, the pride of authority and good repute in the judgement of neighbours found in his circle, make up his world, and there is no spiritual treasury outside on which he can draw for his intellectual and moral life. A man nowadays may be excluded from his family, whether this consist of father, mother, brothers and sisters, or a whole section of society; and he need not perish on that account, because no family, however large, can absorb the entire contents of a reasonably well-equipped human being's soul. He has parts of himself placed about here and there; even nature is in spiritual correspondence with him. But man as a member of a clan has a void about him; it need not mean that his kinsmen lack all wider interest, it does not mean that he is unable to feel himself as member of a larger political and religious community; but these associations are, in the first place, disproportionately weak, so that they cannot assert themselves side by side with frith, and further, they are only participated in through the medium of kinship or frith, so that they can have no independent existence of their own. A man cast off from his kin cannot appeal to nature for comfort, for its dominant attribute is hostility, save in the form where it faces him as inspired by humankind, cultivated and inhabited; and in the broad, fair fields it is only the land of his inheritance that meets him fully and entirely with friendly feelings. It will also be found that in cases where a niding is saved to the world by being received into a new circle, a family or a company of warriors, he does not then proceed by degrees from his former state over to the new; he leaps across a channel, and becomes a new man altogether.
Vilhelm Grønbech (The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2)
The U.S. system of justice contains laws whereby nonhuman animals have no legal standing, but are defined as “property,” as wives and enslaved Africans once were. Other animals (including mice, rats, and birds) are excluded from the legal definition of “animal” in the U.S., thereby denying these individuals whatever slight protection might be provided by U.S. animal welfare laws, and allowing science to use these sentient beings in any way researchers see fit, without fear of legal sanction. Other speciesist laws prevent animal advocates from using free speech on behalf of hunted animals, while protecting right-to-life advocates who speak out on behalf of fetuses. Institutionalized support for the systematic oppression of nonhuman animals is also evident in the recent Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, as well as in the mainstream media, both of which – unbelievably – label animal advocates as “terrorists.
Lisa Kemmerer (Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice)
she was a water goddess who came out of the river to marry the first duke, but she couldn’t be a mortal woman. She comes back to cry for the loss of her children.” “And when have you heard her?” “The night that my baby sister died. I heard something. And I knew at once that it was Melusina.” “But how did you know it was her?” the other maid whispers, afraid of being excluded from the conversation. I shrug, and Joan smiles in recognition of truths that cannot be explained. “I just knew,” I say. “It was as if I recognized her voice. As if I had always known it.” “That’s true. You just know,” Joan nods. “But how do
Philippa Gregory (The Lady of the Rivers (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #1))
There is no room for resentment. There is nothing to hate. You will never hear from me again. I am a blurry dot, slowly vanishing on the horizon. Let’s count the suns that did not come out. The shallow clouds. The suffocating sweat. Let’s count the excluded loves.
Cristina Rivera Garza (Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice)