...there is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn. I'm not certain what the difference is, but I do know that if... you butt your head against a stone wall long enough, at some point you realize the wall is stone and that your head is flesh and blood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This yr there is a gray stone wall damming my stream, and when the falling leaves stir my genes, I pace my cell or flop on my... bunk and stare at 47 black faces across the space. I am all of them, they are all of me, I am me, they are thee, and I have no sons to float in the space between.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment the...re was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all remaining respect for it, and pitied it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And now he comes again with clatter of stone, And mounts the wall again with whited eyes... And all his tail that isn't hair up straight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea,... Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,... This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessèd plot, this earth, this realm, this England.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We lay long in the immense tide Of shade and shadowy desire... And saw the dusk assail the wall, The black surge, mounting, crash the stone! Companion of this lust, we fall, I said lest we should die alone.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 »
Mind in its purest play is like some bat That beats about in caverns all alone,... Contriving by a kind of senseless wit Not to conclude against a wall of stone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the libert...y of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her--Lucretia Mott, the Grimke sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone--a long galaxy of great women.... Those older women have gone on, and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »