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.”
“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.”
“For no man who lives at all lives unto himself. He either helps or hinders all who are in anywise connected to him.”
“He was whipped oftener who was whipped easiest.”
“none to molest them or make them afraid.”
“A man’s troubles are always half disposed of when he finds endurance the only alternative.”
“Better to be strong than pretty and useless.”
“Owl,' said Rabbit shortly, 'you and I have brains. The others have fluff. If there is easy thinking to be done in this Forest - and when I say thinking I mean thinking - you and I must do it.”
“Only you can decide what breaks you, Cursebreaker. Only you.”
“He who cannot learn by others' mistakes is stupid. He who cannot learn by his own errors is a fool.”
“It's strange. There's your life. You begin it, feeling that it's something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it's like a sacred treasure. Now it's over, and it doesn't make any difference to anyone, and it isn't that they are indifferent, it's just that they don't know, they don't know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there's something about it that they should understand. I don't understand it myself, but there's something that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it? What?”
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