Glass Ceilings Quotes

The United Nations was the thing I wanted to work for. Like the United Nations Commission for Refugees is what I was interested in. And then people said if you do that you'll hit glass ceilings all the time, because you are not Ghanian or Nigerian and that's the way to progress though a multinational organization like that. In any event, they said do five years' legal experience and come back. And after five years I decided to stay where I was. So I am really an accidental lawyer. ~ John Gimlette

Maybe its not necessarily a dead-end job; maybe more along the lines of a rear-end one. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Educational equality doesn't guarantee equality on the labor market. Even the most developed countries are not gender-equal. There are still glass ceilings and 'leaky pipelines' that prevent women from getting ahead in the workplace. ~ Michelle Bachelet

...if I have a daughter I will tell her she can do anything, and I will mean it, because I have no other intention of informing her otherwise. As my mother did with me, and my mother's mother before her, I shall simply hide the truth from her. I will tell her that despite what others may whisper, there is no difference between her and any boy. I will tell her to work her hardest and try her best. And that if one day she looks around and finds that, despite her very best efforts, lesser men have superseded her, then she probably could have done better. These words may not be true, nor will they be fair, but I would hope that they ensure she never becomes a victim of her own femininity. I hope she will be empowered to pick herself up, study harder, work longer, and exceed her own expectations. I don't want my daughter to break any glass ceilings. I'd rather she never even contemplated their existence. Because glass ceilings, closed doors, and boys clubs are notions, they're ideas, and they're not tangible. You can't see, touch, or feel them. They can only exercise power over us if we choose to believe in them. So why lay down your own gauntlet? The cliche rings true, if you reach for the moon, you might just land on the stars. Throw a glass ceiling into the works, and it can only get in the way. And I suspect that deep down, every woman who ever truly excelled thought exactly this way. I doubt they ever gave much thought to the fact that they are women. I think they just really ~ Amy Mowafi

Glass ceilings have been broken, but more have to be broken. ~ Madeleine Albright

In all societies, both women and men are powerfully conditioned to repress the daily realities of (sexual harassment and workplace glass ceilings) and to collude with the rest of society in keeping these dimensions of shared experiences hidden. ~ William Keepin

Glass ceilings
can't stop me.
Glass slippers
don't interest me.
Glass mirrors
don't define me.
I decide who I will
or I will not be.
And I choose to be
unbreakable
untakeable
unshakeable
me. ~ L.R. Knost

Though I'm a New Englander, I'm very indoorsy once the mercury drops. ~ Julia Glass

Stop there, Breathe.
For a while you need to leave, live.
Stop pushing your face into that photo called
past, stuck in the photo frame of time. Stop
scratching your heart, give the wound time to
heal. For i know, when the photo frame falls
down, the broken pieces of glass fall apart,
just like memories. But no, you want to keep
it to the chest, close to your heart. You know
you shouldn't but you're too coward to let go.
It keep sucking your heart, into a black hole
of muddy memories. Making you a dark
shattered soul, incapable of finding solace.
So stop. For a while let's just live. Let's just
breathe. Let's just love ourselves, for it's you
who need it the most. ~ Sameer Khan

I watched him spread out his arms with a smile before he crashed through the table in a beautiful crescendo, the glass sounding like tinkles from a piano as its shavings glittered across the floor and sliced through his face and body. ~ Lee Matthew Goldberg

The worst part about doing something inexcusable is that you can never take it back. It's like breaking a glass. It can't unbreak. The best you can do it sweep it up, and hope you don't step on the slivers you left behind. ~ Neal Shusterman

Science and religion, religion and science, put it as it may, they are the two sides of the same glass, through which we see darkly until these two focus together, reveal the truth. ~ Pearl S. Buck

She's just jealous, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it's not, it's the worst, it's the worst feeling there is - incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and focused and hard as glass, like a view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness. ~ Margaret Atwood

Strike a glass and it will not endure an instant. Simply do not strike it and it will endure a thousand years. ~ G.K. Chesterton

When we opened the doors, we saw that the entire room was scorched black and you were on the floor possibly dead, surrounded by broken glass. Window glass is expensive, you realize that?" "Yes, Your Majesty," he said meekly. ~ Megan Whalen Turner

Trinity Park lies directly across from the library, Trinity Church rising like a midieval thought amidst the glass and steel towers. ~ Nick Flynn

Elizabeth watched as Nick, alternating between teasing and coaxing, persuaded Lizzy to drink the entire glass of lemonade. He's so good with her - with all the children. Someday, he'll make a wonderful father. That unexpected warmth crept into her cheeks again. As if Nick read her mind, his eyes met hers. Elizabeth blushed. Surely he wasn't having similar thoughts about her? ~ Debra Holland

Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves. ~ William Davenant

It looked rather stylish next to my wife's glass of wine, like a still from a North Korean IKEA catalogue. ~ Lennard Van Ree

Lighthouses are not just stone, brick, metal, and glass. There's a human story at every lighthouse; that's the story I want to tell. ~ Elinor Dewire

Sophie felt as if she were encased in a glass globe called summer. ~ Nancy Thayer

I scan his features, his nose, his lips, searching for something, anything that rings a bell. A clue to connect me to him. But remembering last night is like looking frosted glass. ~ Daisy Whitney

He was waiting for me at the best table in the room, toying with a glass of white wine and listening to the pianist who was playing a piece by Granados with velvet fingers. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Mrs. Faulkner had sidled up to me and said Good day, Mrs. Elliot?
I just looked at her, and I saw in her eyes that she was wanting some kind of approval for her boy because of his career ahead, and she suddenly just looked like an old lady, not fancy and rich and frightening. An old lady whose son admired my husband, and who herself would be as helpless in the Territories as a newborn calf and not nearly as useful. Good day, I said back. It is a funny thing how much more proud people can be of themselves if they never step back and take a good look in a glass. ~ Nancy E. Turner

We came from a mystery and it's to a mystery we go Maybe there's something there, but I'm betting it's not God as any church understands Him. Look at the babble of conflicting beliefs and you'll know that. They cancel each other out and leave nothing. If you want truth, a power greater than yourselves, look to the lightning - a billion volts in each strike, and a hundred thousand amperes of current, and temperatures of fifty thousand degrees Fahrenheit. There's a higher power in that, I grant you. But here in this building? No. Believe what you want, but I tell you this: behind Saint Paul's darkened glass, there is nothing but a lie. ~ Stephen King

She put her feet down gently. The whole world was made of glass, and the glass was full of champagne, and Bunnatine was a bubble, just flicking up and up and up. ~ Kelly Link

And as Bi'ul leaped at him, a shimmering prism of rage, Dairy swung.
The world went black for one long moment, and there was only the sound of glass breaking, a glass containing all the oceans in the world, and those oceans held back the fires of a thousand suns, and it all burst forth in one massive wave of power that spread across creation in an instant. ~ Patrick Weekes

My mind blurs to a ripple of pleasure when his soft, full lips at last make contact with mine. He starts to deepen the kiss, but pauses, intent on the glass behind me. "You gotta be kidding."
I glance over my shoulder. Outside, Morpheus hangs on the glass in moth form, level with my head, glaring at us with his bulbous gaze. Even without a face, his smugness is apparent. His favorite pastime is interrupting Jeb's romantic moments. I try not to laugh, but can't help myself.
"Cocky son of a bug." Jeb sets me on the floor and draws the dropcloth tighter around me.
A barn owl swoops from the sky and skims the glass. Morpheus launches off in a tizzy, trying to outrun the bird. Now Jeb's the one laughing.
I slap his shoulder. "Hey, that's not funny."
"Ah, he'll be okay." Jeb raises an eyebrow, watching the aerial pursuit taking place outside the glass. "It's a new genus of vegetarian owls. They're only in it for the chase. Besides, Morphie-boy can change to his other form anytime he wants." ~ A.G. Howard

I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but a few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet. ~ Henry David Thoreau

What people had had shed and left
a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes
those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor. ~ Virginia Woolf

They prickled her like thorns and leaves growing under her skin, and she felt the ache of a glass vine caging her forearm. They would crack, and the jagged pieces would cut into her wrists. Her blood would tint the glass. It would splinter and cut deeper into her. ~ Anna-Marie McLemore

You'd be surprised just how fast you can close the door on your past. Learn needlepoint. Make a stained-glass lamp. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

An old book was a time capsule. When you opened the front cover, you opened a door to another world - a world accessible through a kind of looking glass made of hard-board and cloth. The author's voice resonated in the reader's head with the same words that had resonated in his own as he wrote them. He spoke to the reader from the past. What he had witnessed, experienced, learned, and discovered would live forever. You only had to turn a page to travel in time. ~ Stephen Parrish

May your glass always be full, may there always be a roof over your head, and may you dirty sinners be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead. ~ Jason Jack Miller

Myrna was not astigmatic; the lenses were clear glass; she wore the glasses to prove her dedication and intensity of purpose. ~ John Kennedy Toole

A lot of broadcasting, I think, is doing a tremendous amount of preparation and trying to act like, 'Oh, this thought is just occurring to me right now' - and speaking sincerely. ~ Ira Glass

How wonderful it must be, I thought, to be able to just spread your wings whenever you like without someone following you around trying to swat you out of the sky. ~ Gina Holmes

Shards of glass fell down like lacerated rain ~ Rebecca Godfrey

a glass table nearby, with magazines carefully fanned out across it. ~ Kelly Favor

I know life all too well. But I turned from that path. I'm not a rat anymore. I'm the lightning girl, and now I have too many ideas to count. Freedom, revenge, liberty, everything that fuels the sparks within me, and the resolve that keeps me going. ~ Victoria Aveyard

The last summer of his life he sat hours together on the old chintz-covered swing-bed in front of the willow tree, chain-smoking Woodbines and watching the shadows flood the lawn until they swallowed him and only the tip of his ciggarette still showed, a faint red pulse. How she had longed to bring him in, to rescue him as he had rescued his sergeant. Her mother wasn't up to it, sitting all day in the kitchen listening to Alma Cogan and Ronnie Hilton on the wireless, biting her nails until they bled. So, it was she who had gone, crossing the lawn at dusk to stand in front of him, waiting for the right words to come into her head, for a dove that would bring her the gift of speech. But nothing came, and he had gazed at her through the smoke of his ciggarette as though from the far side of a pane of glass. He felt sorry for her perhaps, knowing why she had come out, knowing the impossibility of it. But instead of saying, sit down beside me Alice, sit down, daughter, and we will try to understand together the unbearable truth that love is not always enough, that people cannot always be brought back in, he had said, very conservatively, as though in reference to a discussion he had been having with her in his head for weeks, 'They used flame-throwers, you know'. And she had nodded, yes, Daddy, and left him, and gone to her room, and pushed her face into the pillow and bawled. Because she should have done it, should have, and she had failed. ~ Andrew Miller

Look at it,' he said, gesturing. 'This window looks down upon hundreds more panes of glass, and behind those panes live thousands upon thousands of lost souls. When I feel cast down and helpless, scores of other men do as well, and when I am bitterly angry at feeling cast down and helpless, countless other people languish in concert with me. When I'm happy, it's the same. It's a bit like ... I used to play chamber music. It's like a vast orchestra. And so I shan't ever be alone. ~ Lyndsay Faye

He stood leaning on his cane, hair neatly pushed back from his pale brow, a black glass boy of deadly edges. ~ Leigh Bardugo

As an adult, I have often been deep in serious conversation with someone I've highly respected and seen them roll an eye as my mouth has mangled yet another magnificently conceived, clumsily articulated sentence. In my mind, the words are mellifluous as honey. In my mouth, they are shards of glass. ~ Kate Forsyth

Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.

What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.

An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally.

That's why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That's why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam.

Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He's an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn't care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it's important, not because he expect ~ Seth Godin

If you wanted to kill me, why haven't you smothered me in my sleep?" "No sport in that." She gestured towards the ceiling. "Can I expect to be strung up on that bar and gutted like a deer?" He looked up at the bar and frowned. "Too much sport. Lots of heave-hoeing. Big mess to clean up after. Instead, why don't you just drink the poison-laced whiskey?" He extended the glass toward her again and when she didn't move he said, "No? Okay then." He shot the drink. She might not want the edge taken off but he sure as hell did. ~ Sandra Brown

From the women in this book, I realized that I had been broken open by becoming a mother, and it was time to build myself back up, and discover the new version of who I was becoming. I think I may be recognizing myself again, if only in short glimpses from a reflection in the glass window. By researching this book, I was inspired by the theory of metta, which is described in some Buddhist circles as mother love. Similar notions of mother love may be found in Christianity, as seen through the stories and sculptures of Mary embracing Jesus. Metta is unlike any other type of love. Because it is metta, it brings out the very best and the very worst in us. Metta is forever - there is no "happily ever after," and there is no finish line. ~ Christine Woodcock

Here in England there's a glass wall between you and the taste of reality. I don't want to see the last true passion tamed by railways, and men with Bibles telling everyone to cover their bodies." He spread his powerful, elegant hands. "Play your string quintets, by all means, Mr. Narraway, but don't silence the drums simply because you don't understand them. The men who play violins have steel and gunpowder, and the men who play drums don't. ~ Anne Perry