Civilization means food and literature all round. Beefsteaks and fiction magazines for all. First-class proteins for the body, fou...rth-class love-stories for the spirit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are four classes of idols which beset men's minds. To these for distinction's sake I have assigned names--calling the first ...class Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-Place; the fourth, Idols of the Theatre.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To come down to my own experience, my companion and I ... take pleasure in fancying ourselves as knights of a new, or rather an ol...d, order,--not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker,--not the Knight, but Walker, Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the highest gifts are not measurable in dollars and cents. Beyond and above the class who run an account with the world and me...rely manage honestly to pay in kind for what they receive, there is a noble army--the Shakespeares and Miltons, the Newtons, Galileos and Darwins,--Watts, Morse, Howe, Lincoln, Garrison, John Brown--a part of the world's roll of honor--whose price of board and keep dwindles into nothingness when compared with what the world owes them; men who have taken of the world's bread and paid for it in immortal thoughts, invaluable inventions, new facilities, heroic deeds of loving self-sacrifice; men who dignify the world for their having lived in it and to whom the world will ever bow in grateful worship as its heroes and benefactors. It may not be ours to stamp our genius in enduring characters--but we can give what we are at its best.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, th...e gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts--especially texts by black women. A working-class Jew...ish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ermined and minked and Persian-lambed, Be-puffed (be-painted, too, alas!)... Be-decked, be-diamonded--be-damned! The Women of the Better Class.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them serio...usly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No matter how well-born, how intelligent, how highly educated, how virtuous, how rich, how refined, the women of to-day constitute... a political class below that of every man, no matter how base-born, how stupid, how ignorant, how vicious, how poverty-stricken, how brutal. The pauper in the almshouse may vote; the lady who devotes her philanthropic thought to making that almshouse habitable, may not. The tramp who begs cold victuals in the kitchen may vote; the heiress who feeds him and endows universities may not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »