Inspirational Quotes 88

"Can't touch me!"

The straight dope about social relations:

I went to a very bad school where anyone intelligent was ostracised and bullied. (Man quoted in Obs, Sept 2015)

Kenneth Williams was not bullied – his friendship with the school captain, Reefy, kept him safe. “Anyone who threatened even remotely to bash me, I’d say, Reefy, Reefy, they’re going to bash me, and he always came to the rescue... I loved all that. Can’t touch me!” [In the army] as at school, he cultivated friends to be his protectors. (Born Brilliant)

Standing up to any victimising scenario is beyond difficult, and it can all too easily lead to shunning, vilification, and isolation. (steinermentary.com)

Among the first modern “emotions workers” (the name sociologists give to those who are explicitly directed to control their feelings to influence those of other people) were American housewives. (Guardian on a dictionary of emotions)

I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does. (@slowboring)

People have always gone to great lengths to appear happy+normal to others. (Christopher Mims ‏@mims)

You wanted to help, which is an encroachment upon the will of others. Your attitude ought to be that of one who offers an opportunity that can be taken or rejected. (CG Jung)

Humans tend to care greatly about their status within a group, even if it is on a subconscious level, so in any scenario where they believe they will be evaluated or judged (rightly or wrongly), they’re going to be motivated to do well. And here’s where performance anxiety can kick in. (Dean Barnett, Guardian)

It sounds like a cruel experiment: what happens if you put a cripplingly shy young man in an invasion reality-TV show that stages a succession of blind dates? Oddly, the answer is that it radically improves his life, boosts his self-confidence and creates a social media hero. (Observer on Blind Date)

I’m sorry I brought politics up, because people don’t like talking about it. (Louis Gill of Blind Date)

The seemingly daring British avant-garde, Brian Sewell loved to point out, was actually dated and provincial. (Daily Telegraph)

They seem to have got hold of the idea all over the north that all you have to do to bring down the price of bread, and improve the economy at large, is to erect vulgar, idiotic pieces of sculpture. (Brian Sewell)

When your eldest first goes to school, the mothers of children who are in your child’s class offer a new injection of social possibilities that years at work with the same people and geographically distant school or college friendships cannot match... they live close, they tend to be your age, and they have the same problems and concerns. (Times Sept 2015)

Only one thing stands between you and your dreams. Feasibility. (India Borden-Wuornos ‏@AnemoneOh 3 Sep 2014 )

Single women without family or “introductions”, especially in the fifties and early sixties, could feel pretty firmly closed out from even the casual rituals of social life. (Howard Malchow, Special Relations)

Do you (esp young ppl) feel who you find attractive is ‘policed?’ You say you fancy x, friends go ‘eww’ if not ‘conventionally’ attractive. (monstrous ‏@marcuswstow)

A man can easily ascertain whether a woman is partial to him through a mutual friend, before paying addresses to her. (@GirlsOwn)

The Times hires a couple of older men as interns for the day. One is ex-RAF, treats it like a mission, and makes helpful suggestions. The other is an ex-lecturer. “The moment we send him to the kettle for a round of teas is the real epiphany. ‘I’m not used to taking orders,” he says. “It’s very curious. This really is a feast of fools.” (He spends the day whingeing about social media, which he’s never used. “It’s the pursuit of like, isn’t it? I despair, I really do.”) (Oct 2015 At the feast of fools, society was turned upside down, and masters took orders from servants.)

The moment when you become your parent’s parent... I was 16 and it was too much for me to bear. (Nick Frost, Obs Oct 4 2015)

Every age finds a great deal to condemn in the manners and customs that differentiate the rising generation from its own. The country... has always been going to the dogs, but it has not quite arrived at the dogs yet. (EF Benson)
More here, and links to the rest.