Michael Mina Quotes

I've had two callers ask, 'Did you ever work for someone who is poorer than you are?' Their idea is it takes a rich person to give you a job because jobs are something that are given to you, an inferior, from on high.

On the whole, as we readily acquiesce in the acknowledgment that the field and the cabinet are the proper spheres assigned to our Masters and our Lords, may we also deserve the dignified title and encomium of Mistress and Lady in our kitchens and in our parlours.

When my dad needed a shirt ironed, he would yell downstairs to my mother, who would drop everything and iron his shirt.

One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.

When men do all the outside work, they contribute on average about 10 percent of housework. But as their share of outside work falls, their share of housework rises to no more than 37 percent.

I'll do shoes for the lady who lunches, but it would be, like, a really nasty lunch, talking about men. But where I draw the line, what I absolutely won't do, is the lady who plays bridge in the afternoon!

Now, as always, the most automated appliance in a household is the mother.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

You cannot make women contented with cooking and cleaning and you need not try.

Lives in previous centuries for women are largely a matter of class. It would have been fun to have been a rich, privileged woman in the 18th century, but no fun at all to be her maid.

The English, the plain English, of the politest address of a gentleman to a lady is, I am now, dear Madam, your humble servant: Pray be so good as to let me be your Lord and Master.

Women do kids. Women do cooking. Women doing everything. And yet, their position in society is totally unacceptable.

In my generation, if a man washes the dishes, the older women still tend to cluster around and coo and thank him and praise him. But if a woman washes the dishes, it's business as usual, even if both man and woman have tough office jobs.

Successful men don't date up. They are intimidated by wealthy women unless they are blue bloods. Successful men want to always take care of their women, and that means financially.

In my opinion butlers ought To know their place, and not to play The Old Retainer night and day.

For my own part, I had rather suffer any inconvenience from having to work occasionally in chambers and kitchen... than witness the subservience in which the menial class is held in Europe.

'I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who does the dishes,' she said. So do I. But at the end, there are always the damned dishes.

Would you want your wife or your servant to read this book?

Parenting, as an unpaid occupation outside the world of public power, entails lower status, less power, and less control of resources than paid work.

Women should do kitchen work and take care of babies.

Women belong in the bedroom and the kitchen, in that order.

My upbringing is such that I feel my husband is superior to me and his mother even more superior.

The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

Scratch a socialist and you find a snob.