Explore Book Quotes

I used to gloat over Mark, thinking how utterly he was mine to ruin as I pleased, financially, morally, whatever way would give me most satisfaction.

“You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything the darkness that comes with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up.”

“And so he lived […] in apparent glory, honored by the world, but for all that usually in a melancholy mood, which grew increasingly so because no one was able to take it seriously.”

″‘Tis a mockery to tell a man that he must not overwork his horse, for when a beast is downright tired there’s nothing but the whip that will keep his legs a-going; you can’t help yourself—you must put your wife and children before the horse; the masters must look to that, we can’t. I don’t ill-use my horse for the sake of it; none of you can say I do. There’s wrong lays somewhere—never a day’s rest, never a quiet hour with the wife and children. I often feel like an old man, though I’m only forty-five.”

“There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live. Surely these should never be confused in the mind of any man who has the slightest inkling of what culture is.”

“By the time I was thirteen I knew about as much about American Indians as a good many anthropologists that I have met since.”

″ I haven’t got a Smurgle or a Zurgle in the house, I haven’t even got a Smollypopomouse. So I went to the pet shop and said, ‘What I want Is a Smurgle or a Zurgle or a Smollypopomouse.‘”

“History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible.”

“It was on his grave, my friends, that I resolved, before God, that I would never own another slave, while it is possible to free him; that nobody, through me, should ever run the risk of being parted from home and friends, and dying on a lonely plantation, as he died. So, when you rejoice in your freedom, think that you owe it to that good old soul, and pay it back in kindness to his wife and children. Think of your freedom, every time you see uncle tom’s cabin; and let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to follow in his steps, and be as honest and faithful and Christian as he was.”

“I was glad to see other faces and at the same time disappointed that the war had destroyed the enjoyment of the very experience of meeting people. Even a twelve-year-old couldn’t be trusted anymore.”