I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift... I have ever been given. For what person, except one's own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In asking for a voice in the government under which we live, have we been pursuing a shadow for fifty years? In seeking political ...power, are we abdicating that social throne where they tell us our influence is unbounded? No, no! The right of suffrage is no shadow, but a substantial entity that the citizen can seize and hold for his own protection and his country's welfare. A direct power over one's own person and property, an individual opinion to be counted, on all questions of public interest, are better than indirect influence, be that ever so far-reaching.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I do not think that a Physician should be admitted into the College till he could bring proofs of his having cured, in his own per...son, at least four incurable distempers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That, upon the whole, we may conclude that the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this d...ay cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Negro has no name. He is Cuffy Douglas or Cuffy Brooks, just whose Cuffy he may chance to be. The Woman has no name. She is Mr...s. Richard Roe or Mrs. John Doe, just whose Mrs. she may chance to be. Cuffy has no right to his earnings; he can not buy or sell, or lay up. Mrs. Roe has no right to her earnings; she can neither buy nor sell, make contracts, nor lay up anything that she can call her own. Cuffy has no right to his children; they can be sold from him at any time. Mrs. Roe has no right to her children; they may be bound out to cancel a father's debt of honor. The unborn child, even by the last will of the father, may be placed under the guardianship of a stranger and a foreigner. Cuffy has no legal existence; he is subject to restraint and moderate chastisement. Mrs. Roe has no legal existence; she has not the best right to her own person. The husband has the power to restrain, and administer moderate chastisement.... The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The Negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man. The few social privileges which the man gives the woman, he makes up to the (free) Negro in civil rights.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. The proper place to-day, the onl...y place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them; on that separate, but more free and honorable, ground, where the State places those who are not with her, but against her,--the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I had reconciled myself to a life without marriage or children for the sake of my career. And then my brothers got married. I real...ized I didn't even have a home, that in the future I couldn't do politics when I had to ask permission from their wives as to whether I could use the dining room or the telephone. I couldn't rent a home because a woman living on her own can be suspected of all kinds of scandalous associations. So keeping in mind that many people in Pakistan looked to me, I decided to make a personal sacrifice in what I thought would be, more or less, a loveless marriage, a marriage of convenience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself; hence it remains the favorite pa...stime of the great lovers of their own person.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The effect of having other interests beyond those domestic works well. The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able ...to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »