Suttee Quotes & Sayings

Odd, what a strange thing trust was. A week or so ago, she'd never have trusted Mr. Clark, not for the slightest instant. In that time, little had changed. He was still a blackmailer, still a forger. He was likely even still a liar.
But he'd saved her last night, and now they knew things of each other - things that seemed more important than such details as the name he'd been born with, or the nature of his revenge. He knew she had nightmares about the lock hospital; she knew he'd been in a fire brigade in Strasbourg. — Courtney Milan

They thought that I was a man with reasonable judgment, so I was never under pressure from my parents; I could do whatever I wanted. I never had a negative word from them, nothing whatsoever. — Shimon Peres

Widows tend either to fade away when husbands die, committing emotional suttee, or else find that a new life burgeons. Here in Christchurch, a lot of burgeoning goes on. — Fay Weldon

When people say it's a funny thing about them, you will probably be able to control your hysterics. They are only getting ready to announce the shattering fact that they don't like something. And it's not going to be something that's really quite awful, like suttee or apartheid; it's going to be something small. — Peg Bracken

Dogmatic toleration is nonsense: I would no more tolerate the teaching of Calvinism to children if I had power to persecute it than the British Raj tolerated suttee in India. Every civilized authority must draw a line between the tolerable and the intolerable. — George Bernard Shaw

A poignant example of what it often takes to bring about an end to a superstitious barbaric act may be seen in the Indian practice of suttee, or the burning of widows. The British government abolished suttee by outlawing it, and followed up by severely punishing transgressors. As the nineteenth-century British commander in chief in India, General Charles Napier, told his charges who complained that suttee was their cultural custom that the British should respect: Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs. — Michael Shermer

Mother's electric blanket broke, & I have 'mended' it, so she may be practising suttee involuntarily before long. — Philip Larkin

I should mention that I am a member of the board of directors of Dimensional Fund Advisors. — Merton Miller

If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself. — William Safire

When he saw the River again he knew it at once. He should have; it was now ineradicably a part of his past, his life; it would be a part of what he would bequeath, if that were in store for him. — William Faulkner

The worst disgrace that can befall a producer is an unkind notice from a New York reviewer. When this happens, the producer becomes a pariah in Hollywood. He is shunned by his friends, thrown into bankruptcy, and like a Japanese electing hara-kiri, he commits suttee. — S.J Perelman