Augustine St. Clare Quotes

“Men do get tired, naturally, of a complaining wife. But I’ve kept things to myself, and borne, and borne, till St. Clare has got in the way of thinking I can bear anything.”

“Too much trouble,—laziness, cousin, laziness,—which ruins more souls than you can shake a stick at.”

“Well, now, cousin, you’ve given us a good talk and done your duty; on the whole, I think the better of you for it. I make no manner of doubt that you threw a very diamond of truth at me, though you see it hit me so directly in the face that it wasn’t exactly appreciated, at first.”

“You would send them to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary or two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously.”

“If I answer that question, I know you’ll be at me with half a dozen others, each one harder than the last; and I’m not a going to define my position. I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people’s glass houses, but I never mean to put up one for them to stone.”

“It’s pretty generally understood that men don’t aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.”

“Get up, Tom. I’m not worth crying over.”

“My dear child, what do you expect? Here is a whole class,—debased, uneducated, indolent, provoking,—put, without any sort of terms or conditions, entirely into the hands of such people as the majority in our world are; people who have neither consideration nor self-control, who haven’t even an enlightened regard to their own interest,—for that’s the case with the largest half of mankind.”

“Now, an aristocrat, you know, the world over, has no human sympathies, beyond a certain line in society.”

“Any man who thinks that human beings can, as a general thing, be made about as comfortable that way as any other, I wish he might try it. I’d buy the dog, and work him, with a clear conscience!”

“The fact was, it was, after all, the THING that I hated— the using these men and women, the perpetuation of all this ignorance, brutality and vice,—just to make money for me!”

“There was,” said St. Clare, “a time in my life when I had plans and hopes of doing something in this world, more than to float and drift. I had vague, indistinct yearnings to be a sort of emancipator,—to free my native land from this spot and stain. All young men have had such fever-fits, I suppose, some time,—but then—”

“My mother used to tell me of a millennium that was coming, when Christ should reign, and all men should be free and happy.”

“I lost him the first cholera season. In fact, he laid down his life for me. For I was sick, almost to death; and when, through the panic, everybody else fled, Scipio worked for me like a giant, and actually brought me back into life again.”

“For you to educate—didn’t I tell you? You’re always preaching about educating. I thought I would make you a present of a fresh-caught specimen, and let you try your hand on her, and bring her up in the way she should go.”

“That’s you Christians, all over!—you’ll get up a society, and get some poor missionary to spend all his days among just such heathen. But let me see one of you that would take one into your house with you, and take the labor of their conversion on yourselves! No; when it comes to that, they are dirty and disagreeable, and it’s too much care, and so on.”

“She can’t teach her mischief; she might teach it to some children, but evil rolls off Eva’s mind like dew off a cabbage-leaf,—not a drop sinks in.”

“O! stop these hobgoblin’ nurse legends. You old hands got so wise, that a child cannot cough, or sneeze, but you see desperation and ruin at hand. Only take care of the child, keep her from the night air, and don’t let her play too hard, and she’ll do well enough.”

“Our system is educating them in barbarism and brutality. We are breaking all humanizing ties, and making them brute beasts;”

“I tell you,” said Augustine, “if there is anything that is revealed with the strength of a divine law in our times, it is that the masses are to rise, and the under class become the upper one.”

“Papa, you are such a good man, and so noble, and kind, and you always have a way of saying things that is so pleasant, couldn’ t you go all round and try to persuade people to do right about this? When I am dead, papa, then you will think of me, and do it for my sake. I would do it, if I could.”

“And promise me, dear father, that Tom shall have his freedom as soon as”—she stopped, and said, in a hesitating tone—“I am gone!”

“If it’s particularly agreeable to you to have heart disease, why, I’ll try and maintain you have it,”

“It wouldn’t be the first time a little child had been used to instruct an old disciple, if it were so,” said St. Clare.

“Well, papa, you can do everything, and are everything to me.”

“Tom had his master’s hands between his own; and, with tears streaming down his dark cheeks, looked up for help where he had always been used to look.”

“The honest face, so full of grief, and with such an imploring expression of affection and sympathy, struck his master. He laid his hand on Tom’ s, and bowed down his forehead on it.”

“It seems to be given to children, and poor, honest fellows, like you, to see what we can’t,” said St. Clare.

“I’m not worth the love of one good, honest heart, like yours.”

“Well, Tom,” said St. Clare, the day after he had commenced the legal formalities for his enfranchisement, “I’m going to make a free man of you;—so have your trunk packed, and get ready to set out for Kentuck.”

“Knows all that, Mas’r St. Clare; Mas’r’s been too good; but, Mas’r, I’d rather have poor clothes, poor house, poor everything, and have ‘em mine, than have the best, and have ‘em any man’s else,—I had so, Mas’r; I think it’s natur, Mas’r.”

“Ah, Tom, you soft, silly boy! I won’t keep you till that day. Go home to your wife and children, and give my love to all.”

“Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.”

“My view of Christianity is such,” he added, “that I think no man can consistently profess it without throwing the whole weight of his being against this monstrous system of injustice that lies at the foundation of all our society; and, if need be, sacrificing himself in the battle. That is, I mean that I could not be a Christian otherwise, though I have certainly had intercourse with a great many enlightened and Christian people who did no such thing; and I confess that the apathy of religious people on this subject, their want of perception of wrongs that filled me with horror, have engendered in me more scepticism than any other thing.”

“I am braver than I was, because I have lost all; and he who has nothing to lose can afford all risks.”