...men's double standard of sex morals, whereby the victims of their lust are counted as outcasts, while the men themselves escape... all social censure, really applies to morals in all departments of life. Men make the moral code and they expect women to accept it. They have decided that it is entirely right and proper for men to fight for their liberties and their rights, but that it is not right and proper for women to fight for theirs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... no book ... ever competed with the Bible. The story of Ruth was better than Ramona, and the poetry of Job was better than Long...fellow. I still have my first big Bible, carefully underlined through with red and black ink, and interleafed [sic] with painfully written manuscript pages.... Margery and I earned our five cents a week for church and a penny for Sunday school by learning three verses of the Bible a day and six on Sunday. We learned dozens and dozens of chapters. I supposed "Evangeline" and "Hiawatha" were better poetry, but I didn't like them so well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is beautiful indeed; the colored people have given this to the head of the government, and that government once sanctioned la...ws that would not permit its people to learn enough to enable them to read this book.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place... within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have this very moment finished reading a novel called The Vicar of Wakefield [by Oliver Goldsmith].... It appears to me, to be i...mpossible any person could read this book through with a dry eye and yet, I don't much like it.... There is but very little story, the plot is thin, the incidents very rare, the sentiments uncommon, the vicar is contented, humble, pious, virtuous--but upon the whole the book has not at all satisfied my expectations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature. That intensity may be a ...matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Golden Rule furnishes the true solution of many difficult problems in government and society. Bishop [Atticus G.] Haygood, an ...ex-slaveholder and an ex-Confederate soldier, has given us the best book on the negro question. The title of his work ... tells the whole story: "Our Brother in Black." When reformers, religious teachers, and statesmen, and the general public lift themselves up to the height of the argument contained in that pithy title, there will no longer be a negro problem, nor a problem of capital and labor, nor any question as to the treatment of the criminal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Books have their destinies like men. And their fates, as made by generations of readers, are very different from the destinies for...eseen for them by their authors. Gulliver's Travels, with a minimum of expurgation, has become a children's book; a new illustrated edition is produced every Christmas. That's what comes of saying profound things about humanity in terms of a fairy story.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »