Quotes & Sayings About Matrons

The place didn't look the same but it felt the same; sensations clutched and transformed me. I stood outside some concrete and plate-glass tower-block, picked a handful of eucalyptus leaves from a branch, crushed them in my hand, smelt, and tears came to my eyes. Sixty-seven-year-old Claudia, on a pavement awash with packaged American matrons, crying not in grief but in wonder that nothing is ever lost, that everything can be retrieved, that a lifetime is not linear but instant. That, inside the head, everything happens at once. — Penelope Lively

A thoughtful observer of the scientific betting shop, the biologist Sir Peter Medawar, has said: 'I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not.' But as Medawar goes on to note, conviction is an incentive to work. Science is one of the most passionate of human activities: how else would researchers be sustained through the long weeks or years of drudgery, why otherwise should Hoyle and Wickramasinghe spend so much time in correspondence with school matrons? If appearances contradict this, it is because all gamblers pride themselves on keeping their outward cool. — Nigel Calder

I was not the only young nurse to be acutely conscious of a heightened sex appeal when in uniform. Ironically, the draconian old sisters and matrons who rigidly enforced the uniform seemed to be unaware of the effect it had on the male sex. — Jennifer Worth

Well, I don't know about you, but I don't want to be one of those dried-up matrons you see at bridge parties, scowling at the younger generation. I want to be one of those marvelous old ladies covered in scarves who rock in their chairs with mysterious smiles, remembering the scandalous affairs of their youth! — Melanie Benjamin

Roman matrons used to say to their sons: 'Come back with your shield or on it.' Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome ... (but not before it created an Empire that changed the world -EM). — Robert A. Heinlein

Go to any hospital, you'll find wards that are run by senior nurses with matrons. The point is do they have the power, do they have the responsibility inside the hospital? — Andrew Lansley

He was succeeded on the throne by RAGNAR. At this time Fro (Frey?), the King of Sweden, after slaying Siward, the King of the Norwegians, put the wives of Siward's kinsfolk in bonds in a brothel, and delivered them to public outrage. When Ragnar heard of this, he went to Norway to avenge his grandfather. As he came, many of the matrons, who had either suffered insult to their persons or feared imminent peril to their chastity, hastened eagerly to his camp in male attire, declaring that they would prefer death to outrage. Nor did Ragnar, who was to punish this reproach upon the women, scorn to use against the author of the infamy the help of those whose shame he had come to avenge. Among them was Ladgerda, a skilled amazon, who, though a maiden, had the courage of a man, and fought in front among the bravest with her hair loose over her shoulders. All-marvelled at her matchless deeds, for her locks flying down her back betrayed that she was a woman. — Saxo Grammaticus

England a fortune-telling host, As num'rous as the stars, could boast; Matrons, who toss the cup, and see The grounds of Fate in grounds of tea ... — Charles Churchill

For the first fourteen years for a rod they do while for the next as a pearl in the world they do shine. For the next trim beauty beginneth to swerve. For the next matrons or drudges they serve. For the next doth crave a staff for a stay. For the next a bier to fetch them away. — Thomas Tusser

People, even if they are so thoughtless as to be born black, do not come into this world merely to provide mink coats and diamonds for chattering, trivial, pale matrons, or genocidal opportunities for their unsexed, unloved, and, finally, despicable men - oh, pioneers!

There will be bloody holding actions all over the world, for years to come: but the Western party is over, and the white man's sun has set. Period. — James Baldwin

However, there are certain rites in the talk of matrons, and Martha, having listened to such talk for a large part of her life, should have learned that there was nothing insulting, or even personal, intended. She was merely expected to play the part 'young girl' against their own familiar roles. — Doris Lessing

How many were there of these homely visionaries, prophetic pythonesses, sententious prophetesses, raving old women, swooning damsels, talking crickets, these convulsionaries haunted by incubi, who 'dropped down dead with epilepsy,' how many the matrons desirous of regeneration, and the old women seeking 'purgation?' How many the 'fountains of deceit,' the 'amphitheaters of monstrosities,' how many have tumbled into the 'cavern of nothingness.' Collective infatuation, 'epidemics of the imagination,' 'filthy dreams' born of 'obscene' and delirious 'fantasy,' 'nocturnal flights through the air,' 'brutal releases of pent-up lust' by "melancholic women, endowed with vigorous imaginations and ferocious animals spirits, or indeed old women consumed by all manner of filthy and libidinous desires, which they abet with generous quantities of liquor: no wonder, then, that when asleep they are prey to such nefarious deliriums — Piero Camporesi

Eighteenth-century matrons would have never have dreamed of appointing a redhaired wet nurse for their precious offspring - redheads passed on their horrible characters through their milk. — Kate Williams

A lot of people still maintain genre prejudice. I still meet matrons who tell me kindly that their children enjoyed my books but of course they never read them, and people who make sure I know they don't read that space-ship stuff. No, no, they read Literature - realism. Like The Help, or Fifty Shades of Grey. — Ursula K. Le Guin