Subjection Quotes

“[A] person whose head is bowed and whose eyes are heavy cannot look at the light.”
― Christine de Pizan, Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc

“If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection.”
― Howard Thurman

“What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme - courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe - marriage.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“This pre-eminence is something [men] have unjustly arrogated to themselves. And when it's said that women must be subject to men, the phrase should be understood in the same sense as when we say we are subject to natural disasters, diseases, and all the other accidents of this life: it's not a case of being subjected in the sense of obeying, but rather of suffering an imposition, not a case of serving them fearfully, but rather of tolerating them in a spirit of Christian charity, since they have been given to us by God as a spiritual trial.”
― Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men

“We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.”
― Ambrose Bierce

“[A]s though mindful of the wife of Lot, who looked back from behind him, thou deliveredst me first to the sacred garments and monastic profession before thou gavest thyself to God. And for that in this one thing thou shouldst have had little trust in me I vehemently grieved and was ashamed. For I (God [knows]) would without hesitation precede or follow thee to the Vulcanian fires according to thy word. For not with me was my heart, but with thee. But now, more than ever, if it be not with thee, it is nowhere. For without thee it cannot anywhere exist.”
― Héloïse, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“Whenever you listen to people on the grounds that they have heard from God, you have subjected yourself to their inner longing for perfection and spiritual level of their limited expectations.”
― Victor Vote

“A writer cannot serve today those who make history; he must serve those who are subject to it.”
― Albert Camus

“What superficiality- and what stupidity- there is in trying to depict in a pretty manner things which one has thought pretty. The masters through their subjective perceptions created beauty out of trivialities. They did not hide their interest on things which were nauseatingly ugly, but soaked themselves in the pleasure of depicting them. In other words, they seemed not to rely in the least on the misconceptions of others.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human