One of the great reasons for the popularity of strikes is that they give the suppressed self a sense of power. For once the human ...tool knows itself a man, able to stand up and speak a word or strike a blow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I had got away. That was my victory. The real quarrel with Ireland began to burgeon in me then; I thought of how it had warped me,... and those around me, and their parents before them, all stooped by a variety of fears--fear of church, fear of gombeenism, fear of phantoms, fear of ridicule, fear of hunger, fear of annihilation, and fear of their own deeply ingrained agression [sic] that can only strike a blow at each other, not having the innate authority to strike at those who are higher. Pity arose too, pity for a land so often denuded, pity for a people reluctant to admit that there is anything wrong. That is why we leave. Because we beg to differ. Because we dread the psychological choke. But leaving is only conditional. The person you are is anathema to the person you would like to be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neithe...r can nor should be forgiven.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Should the conflagration climb, Run till all the sages know.... We the great gazebo built, They convicted us of guilt; Bid me strike a match and blow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Celt is quarrelsome; he prides himself that with him it is a word and a blow. He broods upon the memory of ancient wrongs in a... way that to the Englishman is incomprehensible; if the English were Irish by temperament they would still be roused to fury by the name of the Battle of Hastings, instead of summing it up philosophically as "1066 and all that."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgmen...ts of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »