We have no thoughts of our own: they are transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is original in us, and therefore fairly cred...itable or discreditable to us, can be covered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so tediously and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed. And as for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this pathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one microscopic atom in me that is truly me: the rest may land in Sheol and welcome, for all I care.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity--these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace ...of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himself. He will not even enter a drawing room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to indecent suggestion. Man is "The Animal That Laughs." But so does the monkey, as Mr. Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing jackass. No--Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it--or has occasion to.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would ...drive me mad on my death-bed could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carcass back to her soil. I would not even feed her worms if I could help it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... there is a dangerous trend observable in some quarters of the Movement to program Sapphire out of her "evil" ways into a cover...-up, shut-up, lay-back-and-be-cool obedience role. She is being assigned an unreal role of mute servant that supposedly neutralizes the acidic tension that exists between Black men and Black women. She is being encouraged--in the name of revolution no less--to cultivate "virtues" that if listed would sound like the personality traits of slaves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At about that time I was once sitting at my place and whispering--it was naughty, I know--with my neighbor. Then you, Herr Profess...or Rudner, got up from your desk, came calmly down the aisle to me: "Did you speak?" and slapped me smack in the face. And I--the fury is inside me to this day--I didn't hit back. Such were the methods of objectivity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There was such anticipation before her matches. Everybody wondered about Suzanne, what she would wear, what she would look like. I... would love to be like that. Everything is too simple in tennis now. Wouldn't it be neat to be a mystery woman and bring high fashion back to the sport? To be like Suzanne ... out there but untouchable?... unreachable?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
La la la, Oh music swims back to me and I can feel the tune they played... the night they left me in this private institution on a hill.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »