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Quotes
for
the Journey:
Meanness
Malice
drinks one half
of its own poison.
Seneca
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Nothing
is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
-Walter Bagehot
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Half of the
harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
-T.S. Eliot
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| In my
experience, meanness has been a symptom, not a state of being. I've
met very few truly mean people, and those I have met have also been rather
miserable people. Scrooge was mean, and Scrooge was very unhappy,
miserable, even--pathetic. But Scrooge changed, and he changed when
he was shown just how his own actions were affecting other people's image
of him. They despised him, and Scrooge was truly unloved, a state I
wouldn't wish on anyone. But if meanness is a symptom, why do so few
mean people get help? Why don't they examine the problem that
meanness is a symptom of, and then work on that problem?
I believe that
it's because being mean feels good in a certain way. It's a powerful
way of behaving that tends to make other people react in ways that they
really wouldn't react otherwise. Meanness is a method of domination,
and it's a domination that has the cards stacked in your favor when you're
mean, for so few people are willing (or even able) to react in kind when
you're mean to them. Redfield touches on the dynamic in The
Celestine Prophecy, in the context of a power exchange. The
dominating person diminishes the power of the submitting person and
therefore gains power him or herself; the mean person diminishes the power
of the person he or she is being mean to and therefore gains that
power. It's a rush, almost like a drug--"look how I can make
this person so uncomfortable." -Tom Walsh
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| When
you give a lesson in meanness to a critter or a person, don't be surprised
if they learn their lesson. -Will Rogers |
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| Sometimes you never feel
meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It's like how
turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten.
And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally
done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not
to. -Rebecca Stead |
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| My mother says that
when Mrs. Rowley is mean, which is generally the case, it is
really because she is just unhappy, and who could blame her with a
husband like that . . . She says this is really the only reason
people are ever mean--they have something hurting inside of them,
a claw of unhappiness scratching at their hearts, and it hurts
them so much that sometimes they have to push it right out of
their mouths to scratch someone else, just to give themselves a
rest, a moment of relief.
-Laura Moriarty |
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| It
always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in people--kindness
and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling--are
the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits
we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism
and self-interest are the traits of success. And while
people admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of
the second. -John Steinbeck |
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| Money is the
most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength,
honor, generosity and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it
represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and
ugliness. -George
Bernard Shaw |
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| Some people have a necessity
to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to
partially neglect since early
childhood. -F. Scott Fitzgerald |
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