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Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe and aren't even aware of.

Ellen Goodman

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Ellen Goodman
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 11
Journalist
Newton
Massachusetts
Powerful
Describe
Even
Driven
Mind
Aware
Tradition
Minds
Guideposts
Aren
Goodman
Deep
Traditions
Ones
Subconscious

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My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test.
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Civility, it is said, means obeying the unenforceable.
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This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage.
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I think most of us become self-critical as soon as we become self-conscious.
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People have been writing premature obituaries on the women's movement since its beginning.
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What he labels sexual, she labels harassment.
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My father used to say that if a man fools you once, he's a jerk. If he fools you twice, you're a jerk. Only he didn't use the word jerk.
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Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savour it.
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I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.
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Today Washington is our Hollywood, the Senate our Warner Bros., the White House our Beverly Hills. People who never read a line of a movie magazine deal with the lives of leaders as if they were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
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Women have gained access to the institutions, but not enough power to overhaul them.
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We each have a litany of holiday rituals and everyday habits that we hold on to, and we often greet radical innovation with the enthusiasm of a baby meeting a new sitter. We defend against it and - not always, but often enough - reject it. Slowly we adjust, but only if we have to.
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Forty is ... an age at which people have histories and options. At thirty, they had perhaps less history. At fifty, perhaps fewer options.
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She goes in with a prejudice and comes out with a statistic.
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Kerry asks Americans to look at the evidence. Bush asks people to believe.
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Without even knowing it, we are assaulted by a high note of urgency all the time. We end up pacing ourselves to the city rhythm whether or not it's our own. In time we even grow hard of hearing to the rest of the world. Like a violinist stuck next to the timpani, we may lose the ability to hear our own instrument.
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Statistically speaking, the Cheerful Early Riser is rejected more completely than a member of any other subculture, save those with boot odor.
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There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over - and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives.
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It has begun to occur to me that life is a stage I'm going through.
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I rewrite a great deal. I'm always fiddling, always changing something. I'll write a few words - then I'll change them. I add. I subtract. I work and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop at the deadline.
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