Frederick Douglass · 400 pages
Rating: (769 votes)
“How do you feel," said a friend to me, "when you are hooted and jeered on the street on account of your color?" "I feel as if an ass had kicked, but had hit nobody," was my answer.”
― Frederick Douglass, quote from Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
“Men who live by robbing their fellow men of their labor and liberty have forfeited their right to know anything of the thoughts, feelings, or purposes of those whom they rob and plunder. They have by the single act of slaveholding voluntarily placed themselves beyond the laws of justice and honor, and have become only fitted for companionship with thieves and pirates - the common enemies of God and of all mankind.”
― Frederick Douglass, quote from Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
“For no man who lives at all lives unto himself. He either helps or hinders all who are in anywise connected to him.”
― Frederick Douglass, quote from Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
“He was whipped oftener who was whipped easiest.”
― Frederick Douglass, quote from Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
“none to molest them or make them afraid.”
― Frederick Douglass, quote from Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
“A man’s troubles are always half disposed of when he finds endurance the only alternative.”
― Frederick Douglass, quote from Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
“Please go outside. I really don’t want to hurt you.” Levi pulled up short. “No. Not toward me. To the door. The door!” She squealed, and Levi bounded forward, taking the stairs in a single leap. He threw the door wide and brought up his fists, ready to take on the unseen threat. “Get it off! Get it off!” She held her skirts away from her body and twisted her head to the side as if trying to put as much distance as possible between her and the invader clinging to the dark green fabric of her dress. A cockroach. A big ugly one—three, maybe four inches long, its wings still slightly askew. “Please.” Miss Spencer whimpered, and the sound galvanized him to action. Levi opened his hand and swiped the oversized beetle from her skirt. Then, before the thing could scamper into a dark corner, he crushed it with a stomp of his boot, wincing at the audible crunch that echoed in the now-quiet hall. He scraped his sole over the carcass like a horse pawing the ground, and sent the bug sailing out the door. “Did you have to squish him?” Levi jerked his eyes to Eden Spencer’s face. What had she expected him to do? Tie a leash around its neck and take it for a walk? “Don’t get me wrong,” she said, as she raised a shaky hand to fidget with the button at her collar. “I appreciate your removing that beastly insect from my person.” She shuddered slightly, and her gaze dropped to the darkened spot on the hardwood floor that evidenced the roach’s demise. “However, I can’t abide violence against any of God’s creatures. Even horrid, wing-sprouting behemoths.”
― Karen Witemeyer, quote from To Win Her Heart
“I've never told Liat. About who I am. Do you think ... Maati, can you love someone and not trust them?"
"We're born to odd lives, Otah-kvo," Maati said, sounding suddenly older and more sorrowful. "If we waited for people we trusted, I think we might never love anyone.”
― Daniel Abraham, quote from A Shadow in Summer
“He turned into a rhinocerous," Ms. Smirt said.
"He does that," Sabrina said.”
― Michael Buckley, quote from The Everafter War
“In a shadowy place something white flew up. It was a heron, and it went away over the dark treetops. William Wallace followed it with his eyes and Brucie clapped his hands, but Virgil gave a sigh, as if he knew that when you go looking for what is lost, everything is a sign.
("The Wide Net")”
― Eudora Welty, quote from The Collected Stories
“Ignorance of naturall causes disposeth a man to Credulity, so as to believe many times impossibilities: for such know nothing to the contrary, but that they may be true; being unable to detect the Impossibility. And Credulity, because men love to be hearkened unto in company, disposeth them to lying: so that Ignorance it selfe without Malice, is able to make a man bothe to believe lyes, and tell them; and sometimes also to invent them.”
― Thomas Hobbes, quote from Leviathan
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