Kerr, Jean -- Essay (1960-11), “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, I Don’t Want to Hear One Word Out of You,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Vol. 77, No. 4

Dave — Mon, 04 May 2026 19:38:37 +0000

I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas? Personally, I find that it’s work, work, work just trying to keep this top half inch in shape.

Jean Kerr (1922–2003) American author and playwright [b. Bridget Jean Collins]
Essay (1960-11), “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, I Don’t Want to Hear One Word Out of You,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Vol. 77, No. 4
(Source)

Collected in The Snake Has All The Lines (1960).

See Adams (1615).

Child, Lydia Maria -- Letters from New-York, # 1, 1841-08-19 (1843)

Dave — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 15:40:19 +0000

There was a time when all these things would have passed me by, like the flitting figures of a theatre, sufficient for the amusement of an hour. But now, I have lost the power of looking merely on the surface. Everything seems to me to come from the Infinite, to be filled with the Infinite, to be tending toward the Infinite. Do I see crowds of men hastening to extinguish a fire? I see not merely uncouth garbs, and fantastic, flickering lights, of lurid hue, like a trampling troop of gnomes — but straightway my mind is filled with thoughts about mutual helpfulness, human sympathy, the common bond of brotherhood, and the mysteriously deep foundations on which society rests; or rather, on which it now reels and totters.

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, activist, journalist, suffragist
Letters from New-York, # 1, 1841-08-19 (1843)
(Source)

WIST Quotations

Kerr, Jean -- Essay (1960-11), “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, I Don’t Want to Hear One Word Out of You,” Ladies’ Home Journal, Vol. 77, No. 4

Child, Lydia Maria -- Letters from New-York, # 1, 1841-08-19 (1843)