Edward Hoagland quotes

" Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty. " # Age and Aging # Trust # Expectation

" Many divorces are not really the result of irreparable injury but involve, instead, a desire on the part of the man or woman to shatter the setup, start out from scratch alone, and make life work for them all over again. They want the risk of disaster, want to touch bottom, see where bottom is, and, coming up, to breathe the air with relief and relish again. " # Divorce # Risk # Life and Living

" In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog. " # Dogs # Marriage # Friends and Friendship

" The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying. " # Ecology # Death and Dying # Life and Living

" There aren't many irritations to match the condescension which a woman metes out to a man who she believes has loved her vainly for the past umpteen years. " # Infatuation # Love # Belief

" Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga -- stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts. " # Animals # Character # Humankind

" Animals used to provide a lowlife way to kill and get away with it, as they do still, but, more intriguingly, for some people they are an aperture through which wounds drain. The scapegoat of olden times, driven off for the bystanders sins, has become a tender thing, a running injury. There, running away is me: hurt it and you are hurting me. " # Animals # Sin # Love

" Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run. " # Men and Women # Liberals # Growth

" It's incongruous that the older we get, the more likely we are to turn in the direction of religion. Less vivid and intense ourselves, closer to the grave, we begin to conceive of ourselves as immortal. " # Religion # Immortality # Life and Living

" To relive the relationship between owner and slave we can consider how we treat our cars and dogs -- a dog exercising a somewhat similar leverage on our mercies and an automobile being comparable in value to a slave in those days. " # Slavery # Automobiles # Marriage