Of the widow's countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband's death the widow should think I kept myself alive.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that boxing embodies qualities of masculinity that have been largely forgotten in modern times.
Joyce Carol Oates highlights how boxing, as a sport, serves as a powerful symbol for masculinity and the traditional values associated with it, such as strength, courage, and resilience. By referring to masculinity as a 'lost religion,' she implies that these attributes, which were once revered, are now being overlooked or diminished in contemporary society, making the sport's significance even more poignant.
Themes
BoxingMasculinityStrengthCourageValues
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech on masculinity, one might reference this quote to discuss modern values.
More from Joyce Carol Oates
All quotes βI never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
Similar quotes
Western people ask me whether it is a paradox that I am King but support democracy. I have to tell them that in Thailand, the King is the guarantor of democracy.
Bhumibol AdulyadejRead
Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever.
C. S. LewisRead
When prayer removes distrust and doubt and enters the field of mental certainty, it becomes faith; and the universe is built on faith.
Ernest HolmesRead
Aphrodite-Venus had become not a subject of adoration, but an agent of exploitation. From the moment Christian society perceived sex not as a gift of the goddess but a crime against God himself, women were believed to be the vessels of love's malign power.
Bettany HughesRead
By adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.
Barry CommonerRead
By liberty of conscience, we understand not only a mere liberty of the mind, in believing or disbelieving this or that principle or doctrine; but the exercise of ourselves in a visible way of worship, upon our believing it to be indispensably required at our hands, that if we neglect it for fear of favor of any mortal man, we sin and incur divine wrath.
William PennRead