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21 " Was I still myself? If so, who was I? I wasn’t really interested in knowing that. It had no sort of importance for me anymore. Some moorings had broken, some taboos had fallen, and a world of spells and anathemas was springing up from their ruins. What was terrifying about this whole affair was the ease with which I passed from one universe to another without feeling out of place. Such a smooth transition. I had gone to bed a docile, courteous boy, and I’d awakened with an inextinguishable rage lodged in my very flesh. I carried my hatred like a second nature; it was my armor and my shirt of Nessus, my pedestal and my stake; it was all that remained to me in this false, unjust, arid, and cruel life. "
― Yasmina Khadra
22 " A mere wilderness, as you see, even now in December; but in summer a complete nursery of briers, a forest of thistles, a plantation of nettles, without any live stock but goats, that have eaten up all the bark of the trees. Here you see is the pedestal of a statue, with only half a leg and four toes remaining: there were many here once. When I was a boy, I used to sit every day on the shoulders of Hercules: what became of him I have never been able to ascertain. Neptune has been lying these seven years in the dust-hole; Atlas had his head knocked off to fit him for propping a shed; and only the day before yesterday we fished Bacchus out of the horse-pond. "
23 " If you picture other people as superior to yourself, you will realize thatmental image. Putting a preacher, a saint, a prophet, an expert or anybody up on a pedestal in your personal view, fundamentally accomplishes nothing but the effect of putting you in a pit. "
24 " Don't be so sure," said Gamache. " It's a little humbling to realize the pedestal isn't quite so high after all." Brebeuf chuckled. " Welcome to earth, Armand. It's a little dirty down here. "
25 " The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.(A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.) "
― Thomas Jefferson , Writings: Autobiography / Notes on the State of Virginia / Public and Private Papers / Addresses / Letters
26 " How quickly self rises to the surface, and the instrument is ready to believe he is something more than an instrument! How sadly easy it is to make of the very service God entrusts us with a pedestal on which to display ourselves. But God will not share His glory with another, and therefore does He " hide" those who may be tempted to take some of it unto themselves. It is only by retiring from public view and getting alone with God that we can learn our own nothingness. "
27 " In your dread of dictators you established a state of society in which every ward boss is a dictator, every financier a dictator, every private employer a dictator, all with the livelihood of the workers at their mercy, and no public responsibility. And to symbolize this state of things, this defeat of all government, you have set up in New York Harbour a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete this monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of Hell ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here. "
― George Bernard Shaw , The Political Madhouse in America and Nearer Home
28 " ...I put you on the pedestal - made you a saint - dare I blaspheme?... "
― , A Familiar Rain
29 " So I take my lover, my king, and I put him in a pedestal and I cut him down. A man, like the ones who ruined the world. "
― Alaya Dawn Johnson , The Summer Prince
30 " Disrespect also can take the form of idealizing you and putting you on a pedestal as a perfect woman or goddess, perhaps treating you like a piece of fine china. The man who worships you in this way is not seeing you; he is seeing his fantasy, and when you fail to live up to that image he may turn nasty. So there may not be much difference between the man who talks down to you and the one who elevates you; both are displaying a failure to respect you as a real human being and bode ill. "
― Lundy Bancroft , Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
31 " And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. "
― Percy Bysshe Shelley , Ozymandias
32 " The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. "
― William Lloyd Garrison
33 " Of the thousands who have paid homage to virtue, barely one has thought to inspect the pedestal on which it stands. "
― Frances Wright
34 " Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces. "
― Étienne de La Boétie
35 " Outside in the sun the Holy Mother stood on her pedestal in the garden, sorry but unsympathetic. The usual position of mothers. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , The Lacuna
36 " Never place someone so high on a pedestal that if they should fall... you get crushed. "
37 " A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space. "
― Gloria Steinem
38 " We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room. "
39 " I am and always will be a sinner. But that's the beautiful thing about Jesus. I'll always try to be a better person in the eyes of God. But I'm not all of a sudden stepping up on a pedestal and saying I'm holier than thou, 'cause I'm not! "
40 " Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent. "