Daily Inspiration Quote by Cornelia Otis Skinner

Skinner’s line lands like a cocktail-party barb: light enough to laugh at, sharp enough to stick. “A special corner of their hearts” is a cozy phrase, almost sentimental, until she furnishes that corner with “sins they have never committed.” The twist is the joke and the diagnosis. She’s pointing at a culturally trained intimacy between women and transgression: not necessarily the act, but the imaginative proximity to it.

As an actress and a wit working in mid-century America, Skinner is playing with the era’s polite stagecraft around femininity. Women were expected to be the guardians of decorum while also being endlessly scrutinized for failing it. In that environment, “sin” becomes less a behavior than a rumor, a mood, a shadow you learn to carry. The uncommitted sin is the one you’re blamed for, tempted by, warned about, or punished preemptively for. It’s also the one you keep privately as fantasy: the road not taken, the version of yourself that could have been reckless, loud, sexual, selfish, free.

The line’s subtext is double-edged. It teases women for savoring scandal from a safe distance, but it also indicts the social machinery that makes female desire and autonomy feel illicit by default. “Special corner” implies preservation, even tenderness: these “sins” aren’t just threats, they’re keepsakes. Skinner’s intent isn’t to moralize; it’s to expose how respectability can produce its own quiet obsessions, and how a life lived under surveillance develops a rich inner archive of forbidden possibilities.