Merle Shain Quotes

The job of a friend is not to decide what should be done, not to run interference or pick up the slack. The job of a friend is to understand, and to supply energy and hope, and in doing so to keep those they value on their feet a little longer, so that they can fight another round and grow strong in themselves.

No marriage is one person's failure any more than it's one person's success, so it works best to see a marriage that has ended simply as something that didn't work out.

The conflict between what one is and who one is expected to be touches all of us. And sometimes, rather than reach for what one could be, we choose the comfort of the failed role, preferring to be the victim of circumstance, the person who didn't have a chance.

Perhaps the old view of 'Me breadwinner, you hausfrau' worked for our grandparents, when people obligingly popped off before boring each other to death, but it won't work any longer because we are living too long and divorce is needed today to do what death acomplished more economically before.

Most women would rather have someone whisper their name at optimum moments than rocket with contractions to the moon.

The answer doesn't lie in learning how to protect ourselves from life-it lies in learning how to become strong enough to let a bit more of it in.

Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life.

The day you spend hoping, the day you spend waiting, the day you spend in despair, is a day in your life as much as the tomorrow you hope for, but which may never come, so betting today on tomorrow is always a bad bet.

The older I get, the clearer it becomes to me that no one is cheated in this world, unless it's by himself.

Life is like fording a river, stepping from one slippery stone to another, and you must rejoice every time you don't lose your balance, and learn to laugh at all the times you do.

It takes a lot of mulch, love does, to create a froth.

Men who take advantage of one woman take advantage of them all ...

You have to be very careful when you give to others that you don't tell them how great you are rather than how much you value them.

I overheard a young man once saying to his wife, "I can't control you. That's the problem and it's been the problem ever since day one!" And then I heard her answer him and heard her terrible voice. "No!" she said. "The problem isn't that you can't control me, the problem is that you're trying to. Why don't you stop worrying about controlling me and start worrying about controlling yourself?

It has been said that a lot of women of our generation "grew up to be the men they always wanted to marry

Girls gave sex to get love and boys gave love to get sex and conning girls was the favorite indoor sport.

One can't run in a park without a dog or make angels in the snow without a child and there are things one can't do without a lover, so the loss of the lover is like an amputation and the patient goes into shock.

One can never change the past, only the hold it has on you, and while nothing in your life is reversible, you can reverse it nevertheless.

Compassion is the thing that leads you gently back to yourself.

There are problems connected with infidelity and problems connected with being faithful at any cost, and I am for letting those concerned choose the problems they'd prefer. There need not be one rule for all. Infidelity is enlarging and fragmenting and very very dangerous, but it has been known to retrieve people as well as marriages, so it can't be only bad.

Some men are more perfect than others.

Friends are like windows through which you see out into the world and back into yourself. If you don't have friends you see much less than you otherwise might.

There are no perfect men of course, but some are more perfect than others, and we can use all of those we can get.

The people in your life are like the pillars on your porch.
Sometimes they hold you up, and sometimes they lean on you.
Sometimes it's enough to know they are standing by.

Each of us is a seed, a silent promise, and it is always Spring.

You can employ men and hire hands to work for you, but you must win their hearts to have them work with you.

Whether the melon falls on the knife or the knife falls on the melon, it's the melon that suffers." And so it would appear to me

The best kind of men have a certainty in themselves that isn't done in when countered by a certainty in their women, and they are much adored.

Cynicism is a form of cowardice, a failure of courage to hope.

You can tell a lot about what a man lacks by watching what he is cynical about, and many of us are cynical about love.

It can be much harder to be on the receiving end of a transaction than to be the one who gets to give. In fact, being given to can mean being taken from. There is a very strong connection between pride and giving, and those who do the giving get to feel that they are worthy, while those who are given to often feel that they are not.

It takes great generosity to accept generosity.

Sex deepens love and love deepens sex, so physical intimacy transforms everything and playing with it is playing with fire.

Through tattered clothes, small vices do appear. Robes and furred gowns hide all.

We are all persons courtesy of someone else, and since we need others to perceive us in order to experience ourselves, it is very hard to like yourself when those nearest you seem to doubt your worth. And when those around you don't see you as you want to see yourself, it is only too easy to lose the way and start auditioning instead for them.