Precarious Mascuinity Quotes

When looking at the attributes associated with masculinity in the US, the same researchers identified the following; winning, emotional control, risk-taking, violence, dominance, playboy, self-reliance, primacy at work, power over women, disdain for homosexuality, and pursuit of status. ~ Brene Brown

Love may be able to force you into precarious situations, it may lead you into double-edged bonfires and you don't smell the smoke, you only see the temptation of a perfume. ~ Laura Gentile

Only by the aid of language does reason bring about its most important achievements, namely the harmonious and consistent action of several individuals, the planned cooperation of many thousands, civilization, the State; and then, science, the storing up of previous experience, the summarizing into one concept of what is common, the communication of truth, the spreading of error, thoughts and poems, dogmas and superstitions. The animal learns to know death only when he dies, but man consciously draws every hour nearer his death; and at times this makes life a precarious business, even to the man who has not already recognized this character of constant annihilation in the whole of life itself. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

...I found that much of the romance had left the trenches. The old days, from the beginning to July, 1915, were all so delightfully precarious and primitive. Amateurish trenches and rough and ready life, which to my mind gave this war what it sadly needs - a touch of romance. ~ Bruce Bairnsfather

The further we distance ourselves from the spell of the present, explored by our senses, the harder it will be to understand and protect nature's precarious balance, let alone the balance of our own human nature. ~ Diane Ackerman

Man's survival, from the time of Adam and Eve until the invention of agriculture, must have been precarious because of his inability to ensure his food supply. ~ Norman Borlaug

Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man. ~ Edward Gibbon

Unfortunately, the fact is that modern antisemitism grew in proportion as traditional nationalism declined, and reached its climax at the exact moment when the European system of nation-states and its precarious balance of power crashed. ~ Hannah Arendt

Everything in the world was in precarious balance, pure risk, and those who didn't agree to take the risk wasted away in a corner, without getting to know life. ~ Elena Ferrante

Without grievability, there is no life, or, rather, there is something living that is other than life. Instead, "there is a life that will never have been lived," sustained by no regard, no testimony, and ungrieved when lost. The apprehension of grievability precedes and makes possible the apprehension of precarious life. Grievability precedes and makes possible the apprehension of the living being as living, exposed to non-life from the start. ~ Judith Butler

Interference is a terrific page-turner, but it's also a haunting, powerful look at the way families and friendships entangle us all. Berry is a sharp-eyed, engaging writer, and she deftly captures the terrors, ruptures and intimacies of one seemingly ordinary neighborhood, always finding a precarious beauty in her characters' lives. This is a book that is terrifying, startling, and very hard to put down. ~ Rebecca Godfrey

In a nuclear age, and in an age of serious environmental degradation, apocalyptic belief creates a serious second order danger. The precarious logic of self-interest that saw us through the Cold War would collapse if the leaders of one nuclear state came to welcome, or ceased to fear mass death. ~ Ian McEwan

Some people are weak in their faith and testimonies but are not even aware of how precarious their situation is. Many of them likely would be offended at the suggestion. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

Let us consider, brethren, we are struggling for our best birthrights and inheritance, which being infringed, renders all our blessings precarious in their enjoyments, and, consequently triffling in their value. Let us disappoint the Men who are raising themselves on the ruin of this Country. Let us convince every invader of our freedom, that we will be as free as the constitution our fathers recognized, will justify. ~ Samuel Adams

I was standing alone with him when she burst impetuously through the door, tall and wearing a rain-cape on top of a queen's costume, a forgotten crown on her head.

She directed some rapid words at him. He began to tremble all over and dropped my hand from under his arm. Vera seized me cruelly by the arm and led me off... She led me through murky, dusty expanses, between strange machinery and constructions, through valleys and mountains and past a precarious wood to her dressing-room. And she still held me cruelly by the arm. There she slammed the door shut, rudely chasing away some handsome women with the amorous eyes of worshipers.

I do not recall her words. It was as though she were all aflame. She kissed my hands and I realized then that she had seen only me that evening, that she had performed for only me, that she loved me and that this was all such madness.

("Thirty-Three Abominations") ~ Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal

Nationalism always preserved this initial intimate loyalty to the government and never quite lost its function of preserving a precarious balance between nation and state on one hand, between the nationals of an atomized society on the other. Native citizens of a nation-state frequently looked down upon naturalized citizens, those who had received their rights by law and not by birth, from the state and not from the nation.... ~ Hannah Arendt

The international monetary order is more precarious by far today than it was in 1929. Then, gold was international money, incorruptible, unmanageable, and unchangeable. Today, the U.S. dollar serves as the international medium of exchange, managed by Washington politicians and Federal Reserve officials, manipulated from day to day, and serving political goals and ambitions. This difference alone sounds the alarm to all perceptive observers. ~ Hans F. Sennholz

Entitlement is a precarious place from which to create or perform - it projects the idea that you have nothing to prove, nothing to claim, nothing to show but self-satisfaction, a smug boredom. It breeds ambivalence. It's as if instead of having to prove they are something, these musicians prove they aren't anything. It's an inverted dynamic, one that sets performers up to fail, but also gives them a false sense of having already arrived. I don't understand how someone would not push, challenge, or at least be present, how anyone could get onstage and not give everything. ~ Carrie Brownstein

Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one. ~ Isaac Newton

Humanity is not an aggregate of individuals, a community of thinkers, each of whom is guaranteed from the outset to be able to reach agreement with the others because all participate in the same thinking essence. Nor, of course, is it a single Being in which the multiplicity of individuals are dissolved and into which these individuals are destined to be reabsorbed. As a matter of principle, humanity is precarious: each person can only believe what he recognizes to be true internally and, at the same time, nobody thinks or makes up his mind without already being caught up in certain relationships with others, which leads him to opt for a particular set of opinions. Everyone is alone and yet nobody can do without other people, not just because they are useful (which is not in dispute here) but also when it comes to happiness. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty

Speech failures, communication breakdowns, misunderstandings, mishearings, episodes of muteness, stuttering and stammering, word forgetfulness, even the inability to grasp a joke: all these things invoke loneliness, forcing a reminder of the precarious, imperfect means by which we express our interiors to others. They undermine our footing in the social, casting us as outsiders, poor or non-participants. ~ Olivia Laing

Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat. The world is bad; let us learn to be independent of it. External goods are precarious; they are the gift of fortune, not the reward of our own efforts. Only subjective goods - virtue, or contentment through resignation - are secure, and these alone, therefore, will be valued by the wise man. Diogenes personally was a man full of vigour, but his doctrine, like all those of the Hellenistic age, was one to appeal to weary men, in whom disappointment had destroyed natural zest. And it was certainly not a doctrine calculated to promote art or science or statesmanship, or any useful activity except one of protest against powerful evil. ~ Anonymous

I am going to have a grilled cheese sandwich and think about this precarious situation ~ Isabel Quintero

Now that's worth the trip right there." He chuckled, pink starting to sparkle in his eyes. "How goes it, Gregor? Forgot your manners, did you? If I'd known you were balanced in such a precarious state, I might have taken even ... longer."
I'd yanked a sheet between us and made Gregor pick up his hips, but the rest of him stayed where it was so I could keept that knife close to his heart. It left Gregor with his ass sticking up in the air while his face stayed level with mine. I wasn't trying to be funny. Only practical. ~ Jeaniene Frost

Life appears: a complex dampness, destined to an intricate future and charged with secret virtues, capable of challenge and creation. A kind of precarious slime, of surface mildew, in which a ferment is already working. A turbulent, spasmodic sap, a presage and expectation of a new way of being, breaking with mineral perpetuity and boldly exchanging it for the doubtful privilege of being able to tremble, decay, and multiply. ~ Roger Caillois

It seems to me that if humans are capable of sacrificing this much collective benefit in the name of stabilizing an economic system that makes daily life so much more expensive and precarious, then surely humans should be capable of making some important lifestyle changes in the interest of stabilizing the physical systems upon which all of life depends. Especially because many of the changes that need to be made to dramatically cut emissions would also materially improve the quality of life for the majority of people on the planet - from ~ Naomi Klein

Dear friends & fellow characters, you all know the importance we attach to the power of collective prayer in this our desperate struggle for survival. Some of us have more existence than others, at various times according to fashion. But even this is becoming extremely shadowy & precarious, for we are not read, & when read , we are read badly, we are not lived as we used to be, we are not identified with & fantasized, we are rapidly forgotten. Those of us who have the good fortune to be read by teachers, scholars, & students are not read as we used to be read, but analyzed as schemata, structures, functions within structures, logical & mathematical formulae, aporia, psychic movements, social significances & so forth. ~ Christine Brooke-Rose

Every moment is precious. And precarious. ~ Edward Abbey

My relationship to the Jewish people has become my strongest human bond, ever since I became fully aware of our precarious situation among the nations of the world. ~ Albert Einstein

Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them to despise and undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly of small importance, of recent growth, and extremely precarious; the consequence is that they are often sacrificed without regret, and almost always violated without remorse. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

The slight pull was all it took to completely unbalance his precarious load and dump the manure - all atop her boots.
"Bloody hell! Look what ye done!" the boy cried ... If ye hadn't come along and pulled me o'er it ne'er would have happened.But now ye'd best clean it up afore Devington or Jeffries comes along."
"Me?" she replied incredulously. "I'm not the clumsy oaf who dumped it. It's not my mess to clean."
"Well, I ain't about to be the last to finish my chores. Devington will have me turning over the reeking dung pit instead of breaking me fast wi' the other chaps."
"That's nothing compared to my boots, you ham-fisted lout!"
"Tweren't me what pulled the wheelbarrow arse over tea kettle, ye wantwit! Go bugger yer mother and lick yer boots clean!"
"I'll box your ears, you brazen-faced little jackanapes! ... ~ Emery Lee

My hold on the past and the future is precarious and my possession of my own time is always postponed until a stage when I may fully understand it, yet this stage can never be reached, since it would be one more moment bounded by the horizon of its future, and requiring in its turn, further developments in order to be understood. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty

But a wide sea voyage severs us at once. It makes us conscious of being cast loose from the secure anchorage of settled life, and sent adrift upon a doubtful world. It interposes a gulf, not merely imaginary, but real, between us and our homes
a gulf, subject to tempest, and fear, and uncertainty, rendering distance palpable, and return precarious. ~ Washington Irving

Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence. ~ John Wyndham

Meantime do you see me as still working on the book, still trying to answer such questions as: Is there any ultimate reality, external, conscious and ever-present etc. etc. that can be realised by any such means that may be acceptable to all creeds and religions and suitable to all climes and countries? Or do you find me between Mercy and Understanding, between Chesed and Binah (but still at Chesed) - my equilibrium, and equilibrium is all, precarious - balancing, teetering over the awful unbridgeable void, the all-but unretraceable path of God's lightning back to God? ... Though it is perhaps a good idea under the circumstances to pretend at least to be proceeding with one's great work on "Secret Knowledge," then one can always say when it never comes out that the title explains this deficiency. ~ Malcolm Lowry

Gather Me


Scatter me into the digression of this noise
For, I hear not when my eyes are at peace.
I smother the audacity in my voice
Hiding behind a half-charred fleece;
Let me dwell with the fleeting score,
For, I breathe not when my heart is agog!
I strangle the remains of what you tore
Building the ruins of a deserted synagogue;
Then, gather me
From the compositions of a faded song,
From the reverberations of an unaided gong;
From the mirth of our spring sky,
From the waters where thirsts lie;
From the sleekness of white-rose petals,
From the shrieks of remorse bells;
From the digression of laughter beats,
From the silence of bloodied streets;
From the eyes of their precarious silence,
From there; thence, from there; thence,
Then, gather me. ~ Ashfaq Saraf

we should also consider the remoter analogy of the animals. Many birds and animals, especially the carnivorous, have only one mate, and the love and care of offspring which seems to be natural is inconsistent with the primitive theory of marriage. If we go back to an imaginary state in which men were almost animals and the companions of them, we have as much right to argue from what is animal to what is human as from the barbarous to the civilized man. The record of animal life on the globe is fragmentary, - the connecting links are wanting and cannot be supplied; the record of social life is still more fragmentary and precarious. Even if we admit that our first ancestors had no such institution as marriage, still the stages by which men passed from outer barbarism to the comparative civilization of China, Assyria, and Greece, or even of the ancient Germans, are wholly unknown to us. Such ~ Plato

At this point the theater America is in such a precarious place. ~ Estelle Parsons

An estimated value is a precarious measure of justice, compared with the specific thing. ~ William Murray, 1st Earl Of Mansfield

My father followed, during most of his life, the precarious occupation of a country school teacher. ~ Simon Newcomb

Laughing,Savannah jumped from her precarious perch on the boulder into the safety of Gregori's arms.
He caught her,crushing her against his chest, sheer elation, exhilaration, rushing through his veins. To feel again was beyond his comprehension, to feel like this, to have such joy in him, was totally unbelievable. He whispered to her in the ancient language, words of love and commitment that he could not find a way to express in any other language. She was more than she could ever know to him; she was his life,the very air he breathed. You worry about the most ridiculous things, he said gruffly, burying his face for just a moment against her neck,inhaling her scent.
"Do I?" she asked aloud,her eyes dancing at him. "You're the one always concerned I'm going to do something wild."
"You do wild things," he answered complacently. "I never know what you are going to do next. It is a good thing I reside in your mind, ma petite, or I would have to be locked up in the nearest asylum."
Her lips brushed his chin, feathered along his jaw, then nibbled enticingly at the edge of his mouth. "I think you should be locked up.You're postively lethal to women."
"Not to women,only to you. ~ Christine Feehan