117 Quotes by Marya Mannes

Borders are scratched across the hearts of men, by strangers with a calm, judicial pen, and when the borders bleed we watch with dread the lines of ink along the map turn red

A seventeenth-century painting can be "modern" because the living eye finds it fresh and new. A "modern" painting can be outdated because it was a product of the moment and not of time.

The right to choose death when life no longer holds meaning is not only the next liberation but the last human right.

the car, by bisecting the human outline, diminishes it, producing a race of half-people in a motion not of their own making

Human progress had so often been checked by those who were afraid of losing what they had.

flirtation ... is a graceful salute to sex, a small impermanent spark between one human being and another, between a man and a woman not in need of fire.

The art of flirtation is dying. A man and woman are either in love these days or just friends. In the realm of love, reticence and sophistication should go hand in hand, for one of the joys of life is discovery. Nowadays, instead of progressing from vous to tu, from Mister to Jim, it's 'darling' and 'come to my place' in the first hour.

In an age where the lowered eyelid is just a sign of fatigue, the delicate game of love is pining away. Freud and flirtation are poor companions.

fear has always been a diminisher of life. Whether bred in the bogs of superstition or clothed in the brocades of dogma and ritual, the specter of death has reduced the living to supplicants, powerless.