I am the kind of Negro that most white people don't know about. They either don't know, or maybe they don't want to know, I'm not ...sure which I mean, just listen to that fella, David Duke, down in Louisiana--the fella that was with the Klan and then he was going to run for president. David Duke doesn't think there are Negroes like me and Sadie, colored folks who have never done nothin' except contribute to America. Well, I'm just as good an American as he is--better! ...I think I'm going to write a letter, and I'm going to say, "Dear Mr. Duke: This is just to set the record straight. I am a Negro woman. I was brought up in a good family. My Papa was a devoted father. I went to college; I paid my own way. I am not stupid. I'm not on welfare. And I'm not scrubbing floors. Especially not yours."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themsel...ves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. All history is the record of man's signal failure to thwart his destiny--the record, in other words, of the few men of destiny who, through the recognition of their symbolic rôle, made history.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
According to the record of an old inhabitant of Tyngsborough, now dead, whose farm we were now gliding past, one of the greatest f...reshets on this river took place in October, 1785, and its height was marked by a nail driven into an apple tree behind his house.... The revolutions of nature tell as fine tales, and make as interesting revelations, on this river's banks, as on the Euphrates or the Nile. This apple tree, which stands within a few rods of the river, is called "Elisha's apple tree," from a friendly Indian who was anciently in the service of Jonathan Tyng, and, with one other man, was killed here by his own race in one of the Indian wars,--the particulars of which affair were told us on the spot. He was buried close by, no one knew exactly where, but in the flood of 1785, so great a weight of water standing over the grave caused the earth to settle where it had once been disturbed, and when the flood went down, a sunken spot, exactly of the form and size of the grave, revealed its locality; but this was now lost again, and no future flood can detect it; yet, no doubt, nature will know how to point it out in due time, if it be necessary, by methods yet more searching and unexpected. Thus there is not only the crisis when the spirit ceases to inspire and expand the body, marked by a fresh mound in the churchyard, but there is also a crisis when the body ceases to take up room as such in nature, marked by a fainter depression in the earth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They circumcised women, little girls, in Jesus's time. Did he know? Did the subject anger or embarrass him? Did the early church e...rase the record? Jesus himself was circumcised; perhaps he thought only the cutting done to him was done to women, and therefore, since he survived, it was all right.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerne...d simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilised form of autobiography.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It has only just begun to dawn on us that in our own language alone, not to speak of its many companions, the past history of huma...nity is spread out in an imperishable map, just as the history of the mineral earth lies embedded in the layers of its outer crust. But there is this difference between the record of the rocks and the secrets which are hidden in language: whereas the former can only give us knowledge of outward dead things--such as forgotten seas and the bodily shapes of prehistoric animals--language has preserved for us the inner living history of man's soul. It reveals the evolution of consciousness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The record of one's life must needs prove more interesting to him who writes it than to him who reads what has been written. ..."I have no name: "I am but two days old." What shall I call thee? "I happy am, "Joy is my name." Sweet joy befall thee!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The case of Andrews is really a very bad one, as appears by the record already before me. Yet before receiving this I had ordered ...his punishment commuted to imprisonment ... and had so telegraphed. I did this, not on any merit in the case, but because I am trying to evade the butchering business lately.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »