Disguise our bondage as we will, 'Tis woman, woman, rules us still.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that women hold a significant influence over men, regardless of any attempts to disguise or deny it.
Thomas Moore's quote reflects the enduring power dynamics in relationships, highlighting how the presence and influence of women can guide and control men, even when this influence is not openly acknowledged. It indicates that male experiences and decisions are often swayed by female perspectives and emotions, thereby emphasizing the importance and strength of women's role in society.
In practice
This quote can be shared in discussions about gender roles at a conference.
When we relate to our bodies as having soul, we attend to their beauty, their poetry and their expressiveness. Our very habit of treating the body as a machine, whose muscles are like pulleys and its organs engines, forces its poetry underground, so that we experience the body as an instrument and see its poetics only in illness.
Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot.
How many times do we lose an occasion for soul work by leaping ahead to final solutions without pausing to savor the undertones? We are a radically bottom-line society, eager to act and to end tension, and thus we lose opportunities to know ourselves for our motives and our secrets.
Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.
And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.
Bastard Freedom waves Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.
A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.
But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides. Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality. Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us. Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inability to live up to their truth has hurt us.
We all prospect, and don't even know we're doing it. When you start the dating process, you are actually prospecting for the person you want to marry. When you're interviewing employees, you are prospecting for someone who will best fit your needs.
Isnβt the most sensitive point of this mourning the fact that I must lose a language β the amorous language? No more βI love youβs.
And that's the insult of it, how always it comes back to a woman being a "good" mother in the world's eyes or a "bad" mother, how everything in a woman's life is funneled through her body between her legs.
I am part of what she thinks is her illness, a symptom of which she thinks she has been cured. She, on the other hand, is what I was looking for.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.