We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.
Mary MccarthyRead
If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the term 'realistic decision' often implies choosing a morally questionable path.
Mary McCarthy's quote points to the idea that when people frame their choices as 'realistic,' they may be masking unethical considerations behind a facade of practicality. It challenges the notion that realism is inherently virtuous, suggesting that what is deemed realistic can often align with negative or harmful actions.
In practice
In a discussion about ethical leadership, you could quote this to emphasize the importance of integrity over mere practicality.
We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.
The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass ... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.
Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."
Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility.
If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything.
To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.
The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state...Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.
It is these black clothes," said Strange. "I am like a leftover piece of funeral, condemned to walk about the Town, frightening people into thinking of their own mortality.
Of the three official objects of our prison system: vengeance, deterrence, and reformation of the criminal, only one is achieved; and that is the one which is nakedly abominable.
I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.
The Rudderless World is not shaped by vague metaphysical Forces. It is not God who kills the Children. Not Fate that butchers them or Destiny that feeds them to the Dogs. ... ItΒ΄s us. Only us.
It is now 14 years since I first suggested that organic farming might have some benefits and ought to be taken seriously. I shall never forget the vehemence of the reaction.. much of it coming from the sort of people who regard agriculture as an industrial process, with production as the sole yardstick of success.
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