Anne Stevenson Quotes
Sylvia Plath was just a month and a half older than I, and when she committed suicide I was only 30 - and very shocked and sorry. I never knew her personally.
Voltaire’s view is often cited by opponents of assisted suicide or “the right to die.” At the time, the right wing was oriented to let anyone do as they pleased and the left wing was trying to discourage things like suicide. Melancholy was the term for what we now recognize as the disease of depression.
By the end of George Washington’s Second term, he and Thomas Jefferson, his Secretary of State, were at odds. Jefferson became concerned at the Federalist policies and directions and their pro British and anti French tilt and became a leader of the attack on the Federalists after John Adams assumed the Presidency. Since Washington was the leading Federalist of his time, Mrs. Washington felt that Jefferson’s attacks on the Federalists were insulting to her husband. Washington had died in 1799, and Adams and the Federalist Party was on their last legs. When Jefferson came to give his condolences, he was on the verge of destroying Washington’s party, and Martha Washington believed that Jefferson had written some material that had attacked her husband’s policy. While Jefferson never attacked Washington by name—no one did—Mrs. Washington felt that there was too much innuendo and implied criticism from Jefferson’s strong attack on the Federalists. In the final analysis, when Jefferson won the presidency, the Federalists were so badly trounced, the party died and most of the nation agreed with Jefferson.
Anne Stevenson was an American-British poet and writer and recipient of a Lannan Literary Award.
