pleasing others Quotes

“There’s no pleasin’ her, nohow, no matter how you try!”

“But her obsessions tended to be fueled by competition: She needed to dazzle men and jealous-ify women: Of course Amy can cook French cuisine and speak fluent Spanish and garden and knit and run marathons and day-trade stocks and fly a plane and look like a runway model doing it. She needed to be Amazing Amy, all the time. Here in Missouri, the women shop at Target, they make diligent, comforting meals, they laugh about how little high school Spanish they remember. Competition doesn’t interest them.”

“I didn’t need ROTC. But I did it, and I did it good, because my dad was pretty much making me. He’s one of those dudes who feels like there’s no better opportunity for a black boy in this country than to join the army.”

“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.”

“I am not bound to please thee with my answers.”

“It’s always helpful to remember that when perfectionism is driving, shame is riding shotgun. Perfectionism is not healthy striving. It is not asking, How can I be my best self? Instead, it’s asking, What will people think?”

“You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”

“I went to Support Group for the same reason that I’d once allowed nurses with a mere eighteen months of graduate education to poison me with exotically named chemicals: I wanted to make my parents happy.”

“Astonishingly . . . not all girls get dressed just to please men.”

“And you can’t always please yourself; you must sometimes please other people. That, I admit, you’re very ready to do; but there’s another thing that’s still more important--you must often displease others. You must always be ready for that--you must never shrink from it. That doesn’t suit you at all--you’re too fond of admiration, you like to be thought well of. You think we can escape disagreeable duties by taking romantic views--that’s your great illusion, my dear. But we can’t. You must be prepared on many occasions in life to please no one at all--not even yourself.”

“The favour of the Empress was agreeable;
And though the duty waxed a little hard,
Young people at his time of life should be able
To come off handsomely in that regard.”