“
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;
Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;
Who has left the world better than he found it,
Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.
”
”
Bessie Anderson Stanley (More Heart Throbs Volume Two in Prose and Verse Dear to the American People And by them contributed as a Supplement to the original $10,000 Prize Book HEART THROBS)
“
In youth, it was a way I had,
To do my best to please.
And change, with every passing lad
To suit his theories.
But now I know the things I know
And do the things I do,
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you.
”
”
Dorothy Parker (The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker)
“
Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (Orlando)
“
A true gentleman is one that apologizes anyways, even though he has not offended a lady intentionally. He is in a class all of his own because he knows the value of a woman's heart.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
”
”
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
“
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.
”
”
Adrienne Rich
“
There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall.
”
”
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
“
The only person that deserves a special place in your life is someone that never made you feel like you were an option in theirs.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Ladies, let me give you some advice. You can throw all your stupid fucking chick-lit, self-help, why-doesn't-he-love-me books out, because this is all you need to know: Men will treat you the way you let them. There is no such thing as "deserving" respect; you get what you demand from people.. if you demand respect, he will either respect you or he won't associate with you. It really is that simple.
”
”
Tucker Max (I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (Tucker Max, #1))
“
Staying silent is like a slow growing cancer to the soul and a trait of a true coward. There is nothing intelligent about not standing up for yourself. You may not win every battle. However, everyone will at least know what you stood for—YOU.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Hide yourself in God, so when a man wants to find you he will have to go there first.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Women should be respected as well! Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn't women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?...Women, who struggle and suffer pain to ensure the continuation of the human race, make much tougher and more courageous soldiers than all those big-mouthed freedom-fighting heroes put together!
”
”
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
“
...the love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them copy.
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Little Women, #1))
“
" when men and women are able to respect and accept their differences then love has a chance to blossom
”
”
John Gray (Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus)
“
Dignity will only happen when you realize that having someone in your life doesn’t validate your worth.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Once you embrace your value, talents and strengths, it neutralizes when others think less of you.
”
”
Rob Liano
“
He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.
”
”
André Gide
“
Women want their love to be reciprocated in the same way they give it; they want their romantic lives to be as rewarding as they make them for their potential mates; they want the emotions that they turn on full blast to be met with the same intensity; and they expect the premium they put on commitment to be equally adhered to, valued, and respected.
”
”
Steve Harvey (Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment)
“
All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
”
”
Brian Tracy (Personal Success (The Brian Tracy Success Library))
“
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: "I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.
Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas...marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short...and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.
”
”
Adrienne Rich
“
Chasing a man is not winning. The only thing you win is the loss of your dignity. Confidence is knowing your value, instead of expecting a man’s love to provide you with value.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil -- improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?"
"Are you a young lady?"
"I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Shirley)
“
I’m in a band. I don’t go to church every Sunday. I love punk rock music. Sometimes I use swear words a lot. I respect and admire gay men and women. I’m obsessed with horror films. I know what shame feels like. And guess what old man? Jesus is still my Savior.
”
”
Hayley Williams
“
I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."
I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.
”
”
Audre Lorde
“
An open Facebook page is simply a psychiatric dry erase board that screams, “Look at me. I am insecure. I need your reaction to what I am doing, but you’re not cool enough to be my friend. Therefore, I will just pray you see this because the approval of God is not all I need.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others...thus, while the woman thinks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people’s rights, each sex, without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically selfish.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.
”
”
Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1))
“
It was the wife, John thought. And she was giving this tough guy a tongue-lashing. And the man was taking it.
"Okay. I love you. Bye." Tohrment flipped the phone closed and put it in his pocket. When he focused on John again, he clearly respected his wife enough not to roll his eyes and make some macho, shithead comment about pesky women.
”
”
J.R. Ward (Lover Eternal (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #2))
“
I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
”
”
Brendan Behan
“
However, there is a way to know for certain that Noah’s Flood and the Creation story never happened: by looking at our mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Mitochondria are the “cellular power plants” found in all of our cells and they have their own DNA which is separate from that found in the nucleus of the cell. In humans, and most other species that mitochondria are found in, the father’s mtDNA normally does not contribute to the child’s mtDNA; the child normally inherits its mtDNA exclusively from its mother. This means that if no one’s genes have mutated, then we all have the same mtDNA as our brothers and sisters and the same mtDNA as the children of our mother’s sisters, etc. This pattern of inheritance makes it possible to rule out “population bottlenecks” in our species’ history. A bottleneck is basically a time when the population of a species dwindled to low numbers. For humans, this means that every person born after a bottleneck can only have the mtDNA or a mutation of the mtDNA of the women who survived the bottleneck. This doesn’t mean that mtDNA can tell us when a bottleneck happened, but it can tell us when one didn’t happen because we know that mtDNA has a rate of approximately one mutation every 3,500 years (Gibbons 1998; Soares et al 2009). So if the human race were actually less than 6,000 years old and/or “everything on earth that breathed died” (Genesis 7:22) less than 6,000 years ago, which would be the case if the story of Adam and the story of Noah’s flood were true respectively, then every person should have the exact same mtDNA except for one or two mutations. This, however, is not the case as human mtDNA is much more diverse (Endicott et al 2009), so we can know for a fact that the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Noah are fictional. There
”
”
Alexander Drake (The Invention of Christianity)
“
Then, in an unusual moment, she grew emotional, which left little doubt about the level of profound respect and admiration Merkel had for her American colleague:
‘So eight years are coming to a close. This is the last visit of (President) Barack Obama to our country…I am very glad that he chose Germany as one of the stopovers on this trip…Thank you for the reliable friendship and partnership you demonstrated in very difficult hours of our relationship. So let me again pay tribute to what we’ve been able to achieve, to what we discussed, to what we were able to bring about in difficult hours.
”
”
Claudia Clark (Dear Barack: The Extraordinary Partnership of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel)
“
To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex (fucking exclusively with the other sex, i.e., women). All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire… those are, overwhelmingly, other men. In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex.
Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving.
”
”
Marilyn Frye (The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory)
“
...[G]reat progress was evident in the last Congress of the American 'Labour Union' in that among other things, it treated working women with complete equality. While in this respect the English, and still more the gallant French, are burdened with a spirit of narrow-mindedness. Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the ugly ones included).
”
”
Karl Marx (Selected Letters: The Personal Correspondence 1844-1877)
“
It makes utter sense to stay healthy and strong, to be as nourishing to the body as possible. Yet I would have to agree, there is in many women a 'hungry' one inside. But rather than hungry to be a certain size, shape, or height, rather than hungry to fit the stereotype; women are hungry for basic regard from the culture surrounding them. The 'hungry' one inside is longing to be treated respectfully, to be accepted and in the very least, to be met without stereotyping.
”
”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
“
If the difference between guys and men is still unclear, here are a few examples that apply to dating:
A guy uses women to build his self-esteem. A man already has it.
A guy likes to "hang out" with a woman he's interested in. A man asks her out.
A guy doesn't make a move until he's sure there's no risk. A man is bold and clear with his intentions.
A guy plays games with a woman. A man has no time for games because they keep him from getting to know the woman.
A guy will become bitter and angry with a woman when she denies him. A man accepts that dating involves risk.
A guy fears and worships women. A man respects and adores them but fears and worships only God.
Guys are cool and indifferent. Men are hot and passionate.
”
”
Stephen W. Simpson (What Women Wish You Knew about Dating: A Single Guy'S Guide To Romantic Relationships)
“
Dear Child,
Sometimes on your travel through hell, you meet people that think they are in heaven because of their cleverness and ability to get away with things. Travel past them because they don't understand who they have become and never will. These type of people feel justified in revenge and will never learn mercy or forgiveness because they live by comparison. They are the people that don't care about anyone, other than who is making them feel confident. They don’t understand that their deity is not rejoicing with them because of their actions, rather he is trying to free them from their insecurities, by softening their heart. They rather put out your light than find their own. They don't have the ability to see beyond the false sense of happiness they get from destroying others. You know what happiness is and it isn’t this. Don’t see their success as their deliverance. It is a mask of vindication which has no audience, other than their own kind. They have joined countless others that call themselves “survivors”. They believe that they are entitled to win because life didn’t go as planned for them. You are not like them. You were not meant to stay in hell and follow their belief system. You were bound for greatness. You were born to help them by leading. Rise up and be the light home. You were given the gift to see the truth. They will have an army of people that are like them and you are going to feel alone. However, your family in heaven stands beside you now. They are your strength and as countless as the stars. It is time to let go!
Love,
Your Guardian Angel
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
In fact that is why the lives of most women are so vaguely unsatisfactory. They are always doing secondary and menial things (that do not require all their gifts and ability) for others and never anything for themselves. Society and husbands praise them for it (when they get too miserable or have nervous breakdowns) though always a little perplexedly and half-heartedly and just to be consoling. The poor wives are reminded that that is just why wives are so splendid -- because they are so unselfish and self-sacrificing and that is the wonderful thing about them! But inwardly women know that something is wrong. They sense that if you are always doing something for others, like a servant or nurse, and never anything for yourself, you cannot do others any good. You make them physically more comfortable. But you cannot affect them spiritually in any way at all. For to teach, encourage, cheer up, console, amuse, stimulate or advise a husband or children or friends, you have to be something yourself. [...]"If you would shut your door against the children for an hour a day and say; 'Mother is working on her five-act tragedy in blank verse!' you would be surprised how they would respect you. They would probably all become playwrights.
”
”
Brenda Ueland
“
A man worth being with is one…
That never lies to you
Is kind to people that have hurt him
A person that respects another’s life
That has manners and shows people respect
That goes out of his way to help people
That feels every person, no matter how difficult, deserves compassion
Who believes you are the most beautiful person he has ever met
Who brags about your accomplishments with pride
Who talks to you about anything and everything because no bad news will make him love you less
That is a peacemaker
That will see you through illness
Who keeps his promises
Who doesn’t blame others, but finds the good in them
That raises you up and motivates you to reach for the stars
That doesn’t need fame, money or anything materialistic to be happy
That is gentle and patient with children
Who won’t let you lie to yourself; he tells you what you need to hear, in order to help you grow
Who lives what he says he believes in
Who doesn’t hold a grudge or hold onto the past
Who doesn’t ask his family members to deliberately hurt people that have hurt him
Who will run with your dreams
That makes you laugh at the world and yourself
Who forgives and is quick to apologize
Who doesn’t betray you by having inappropriate conversations with other women
Who doesn’t react when he is angry, decides when he is sad or keep promises he doesn’t plan to keep
Who takes his children’s spiritual life very seriously and teaches by example
Who never seeks revenge or would ever put another person down
Who communicates to solve problems
Who doesn’t play games or passive aggressively ignores people to hurt them
Who is real and doesn’t pretend to be something he is not
Who has the power to free you from yourself through his positive outlook
Who has a deep respect for women and treats them like a daughter of God
Who doesn’t have an ego or believes he is better than anyone
Who is labeled constantly by people as the nicest person they have ever met
Who works hard to provide for the family
Who doesn’t feel the need to drink alcohol to have a good time, smoke or do drugs
Who doesn't have to hang out a bar with his friends, but would rather spend his time with his family
Who is morally free from sin
Who sees your potential to be great
Who doesn't think a woman's place has to be in the home; he supports your life mission, where ever that takes you
Who is a gentleman
Who is honest and lives with integrity
Who never discusses your private business with anyone
Who will protect his family
Who forgives, forgets, repairs and restores
When you find a man that possesses these traits then all the little things you don’t have in common don’t matter. This is the type of man worth being grateful for.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder