Well, it is a good experience, to divest oneself of some tested ideals, some old standbys, And even finding nothing to put in... their place is a good experience, Preparing one, as it does, for the consternation that is to come.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
History by apprising them [students] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of ...other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In order to swim one takes off all one's clothes--in order to aspire to the truth one must undress in a far more inward sense, div...est oneself of all one's inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness etc. before one is sufficiently naked.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Biography, in its purer form, confined to the ended lives of the true and brave, may be held the fairest meed of human virtue--one... given and received in entire disinterestedness--since neither can the biographer hope for acknowledgment from the subject, not the subject at all avail himself of the biographical distinction conferred.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The representative women of the nation have done their uttermost for the last thirty years to secure freedom for the negro, and so... long as he was lowest in the scale of being we were allowed to press his claims; but now, as the celestial gate to civil rights is slowly moving on its hinges, it becomes a serious question whether we had better stand aside and see "Sambo" walk into the kingdom first. As self-preservation is the first law of nature, would it not be wiser to keep our lamps trimmed and burning, and when the constitutional door is open, avail ourselves of the strong arm and blue uniform of the black soldier to walk in by his side, and thus make the gap so wide that no privileged class could ever again close it against the humblest citizen of the republic?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legis...lator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the ...walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most primitive experiences of shame are connected with sight and being seen, but it has been interestingly suggested that guil...t is rooted in hearing, the sound in oneself of the voice of judgment; it is the moral sentiment of the word. There are further differences in the experience of the two reactions. Gabriele Taylor has well said that "shame is the emotion of self-protection," and in the experience of shame, one's whole being seems diminished or lessened. In my experience of shame, the other sees all of me and all through me, even if the occasion of shame is on my surface--for instance, in my appearance; and the expression of shame, in general, as well as in the particular form of it that is embarrassment, is not just the desire to hide, or to hide my face, but the desire to disappear, not to be there. It is not even the wish, as people say, to sink through the floor, but rather the wish that the space occupied by me should be instantaneously empty. With guilt it is not like this. I am more dominated by the thought that even if I disappeared, it would come with me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Promise me solemnly," I said to her as she lay on what I believed to be her death bed, "if you find in the world beyond the grave... that you can communicate with me--that there is some way in which you can make me aware of your continued existence--promise me solemnly that you will never, never avail yourself of it." She recovered and never, never forgave me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Abbe Goussault, a counsellor at High Court, writes [at the end of the 17th century]: "Familiarizing oneself with one's childre...n, getting them to talk about all manner of things, treating them as sensible people and winning them over with sweetness, is an infallible secret for doing what one wants with them. . . . A few caresses, a few little presents, a few words of cordiality and trust make an impression on their minds, and they are few in number that resist these sweet and easy methods of making them persons of honour and probity."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »