Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (American Author)

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1934–2002) was an American author, essayist, and journalist known for her compelling personal narratives and insightful commentaries on culture, travel, and the human condition. She is best recognized for her autobiographical work, particularly her account of growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, and for her travel writing.

Born in Queens, New York, Harrison and her mother converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses when she was nine, creating a rift with her father and brother. While her mother fully embraced the faith, Harrison, a gifted student, developed a close bond with her English teacher, Arnold Horowitz, who nurtured her writing. After high school, she worked at the Jehovah’s Witness headquarters, but her relationship with Horowitz led to a conflict between her faith and artistic aspirations, resulting in a nervous breakdown and her eventual departure from the religion.

Harrison later wrote for publications such as The New York Review of Books and The New York Times Magazine. She published two essay collections, Off Center (1980) and The Astonishing World (1992.) Her travel writing includes Italian Days (1989) and The Islands of Italy: Sicily, Sardinia, Aeolian (1991.) Her final work, An Accidental Autobiography (1996,) is a stream-of-consciousness collection of reflections.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

To offer the complexities of life as an excuse for not addressing oneself to the simpler, more manageable (trivial) aspects of daily existence is a perversity often indulged in by artists, husbands, intellectuals—and critics of the Women’s Movement.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Topics: Excuses

I refuse to believe that trading recipes is silly. Tuna fish casserole is at least as real as corporate stock.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Topics: Eating

Women’s propensity to share confidences is universal. We confirm our reality by sharing.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Topics: Sharing, Secrets

True revolutionaries are like God—they create the world in their own image. Our awesome responsibility to ourselves, to our children, and to the future is to create ourselves in the image of goodness, because the future depends on the nobility of our imaginings.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Topics: Responsibility, Revolutions, Revolution, Revolutionaries

There are no original ideas. There are only original people.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Topics: Originality

Beware of people carrying ideas. Beware of ideas carrying people.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Belief in the absence of illusions is itself an illusion.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Topics: Absence, Illusion

Kindness and intelligence don’t always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Topics: Failure, Danger, Relationships

The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between the good and the lesser good.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Topics: Foresight, Forethought, Vision, Fantasy, Imagination

To sleep is an act of faith.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Topics: Sleep

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