Quote

When a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is the chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.

Doris Lessing

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Doris Lessing
Age: 94 †
Born: 1919
Born: October 22
Died: 2013
Died: November 17
Autobiographer
Essayist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Bakhtaran
Doris May Tayler
Jane Somers
White
Diversity
Resentment
Sense
Guilt
Accident
Human
Avoid
Chief
Humans
Brings
Chiefs
Fumes
Looks
Deny
Native
Whip
Men
Justice
Africa
Denies
Eyes
Accidents
Whips
Eye
Sees
Preoccupation

More quotes by Doris Lessing

Image
You remember with what you are at the time you are remembering.
Doris Lessing
Image
In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.
Doris Lessing
Image
Perhaps it is a fault of the species who thrive in peace, mutual help, aspirations for more of the same -- to forget that outside these borders dwell very different types of mind, feeding on different fuel.
Doris Lessing
Image
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag...
Doris Lessing
Image
When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.
Doris Lessing
Image
Borrowing is not much better than begging just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.
Doris Lessing
Image
Perhaps it is not such a bad marriage after all? There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in their depths, are well matched, making each other miserable in the way they need, in the way the pattern of their life demands.
Doris Lessing
Image
Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.
Doris Lessing
Image
If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
Doris Lessing
Image
This is an inevitable and easily recognizable stage in every revolutionary movement: reformers must expect to be disowned by those who are only too happy to enjoy what has been won for them.
Doris Lessing
Image
Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.
Doris Lessing
Image
A writer falls in love with an idea and gets carried away.
Doris Lessing
Image
Loneliness, she thought, was craving for other people's company. But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of the spirit for lack of companionship.
Doris Lessing
Image
Parents should leave books lying around marked forbidden if they want their children to read.
Doris Lessing
Image
The smell of manure, of sun on foliage, of evaporating water, rose to my head two steps farther, and I could look down into the vegetable garden enclosed within its tall pale of reeds - rich chocolate earth studded emerald green, frothed with the white of cauliflowers, jeweled with the purple globes of eggplant and the scarlet wealth of tomatoes.
Doris Lessing
Image
Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.
Doris Lessing
Image
All politicians are not the same. I've never felt that way. What is the same is that voters get very excited about new faces, like Clinton and Blair - and they have unrealistic expectations that the world will change overnight. A cynical old hand like myself knows that it won't.
Doris Lessing
Image
All things come alike to all there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not.
Doris Lessing
Image
The old watch the young with anguish, pain, fear. Above all what each has learned is what things cost, what has to be paid.
Doris Lessing
Image
It was all wrong, ugly, unhappy and coloured with cynicism, but nothing was tragic, there were no moments that could change anything or anybody. From time to time the emotional lightning flashed and showed a landscape of private misery, and then — we went on dancing.
Doris Lessing