Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The capsules of the geranium furnish admirable barometers. Fasten the beard, when fully ripe, upon a stand, and it will twist itself or untwist, according as the air is moist or dry.
We have a very long way to go to really penetrate the power structure. Until that happens, you will not see stability among the workforce, among women - in the workforce among women.
It is of no use to commit whole pages to memory, merely to recite them once without hesitation; you must think of the meaning more than the words - of the ideas more than the language.
Of all the calamities to which humanity is subject, none is so dreadful as insanity. ... All experience shows that insanity seasonably treated is as certainly curable as a cold or a fever.
If we had only those things which are procured with ease and freedom from danger, we should find the comforts and luxuries, if not many of the necessaries of life, considerably diminished.
Many African-American men are incarcerated. And so African-American women do carry an enormous burden. And traditionally have carried a greater burden than perhaps their white counterparts.
Your minds may now be likened to a garden, which will, if neglected, yield only weeds and thistles; but, if cultivated, will produce the most beautiful flowers, and the most delicious fruits.
I was early taught by sorrow to shed tears, and now when sudden joy lights up, or any unexpected sorrow strikes my heart, I find it difficult to repress the full and swelling tide of feeling.
Indulged habits of dependence create habits of indolence, and indolence opens the portal to petty errors, to many degrading habits, and to vice and crime with their attendant train of miseries.
Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory.
There is, I think, great difficulty in writing of one's self: it is almost impossible to present subjects where the chief actor must be conspicuous and not seem to be, or really be, egotistical.
What an enthusiastic devotion is that which sends a man from the attractions of home, the ties of neighbourhood, the bonds of country, to range plains, valleys, hills, mountains, for a new flower.
The olive branch has been consecrated to peace, palm branches to victory, the laurel to conquest and poetry, the myrtle to love and pleasure, the cypress to mourning, and the willow to despondency.
To name the world in your own terms, to tell your own story, is an act of authority and power. When you write, you are saying, in effect, 'I have a voice. I have a story. This is what I have to say.'
I do not make any apologies for my manner or personality. I come from a long line of very strong, black African-American women who neither bend nor bow. I haven't had very good modeling in submission.
I have had so much at heart. Defeated, not conquered; disappointed, not discouraged. I have but to be more energetic and more faithful in the difficult and painful vocation to which my life is devoted.
It must never be lost sight of what observation is for. It is not for the sake of piling up miscellaneous information or curious facts, but for the sake of saving life and increasing health and comfort
Time passed solely in the pursuit of pleasure leaves no solid enjoyment for the future; but from the hours you spend in reading and studying useful books, you will gather a golden harvest in future years.
Man is not made better by being degraded; he is seldom restrained from crime by harsh measures, except the principle of fear predominates in his character; and then he is never made radically better for its influence.
Man is not made better by being degraded; he is seldom restrained from crime by harsh measures, except the principle of fear predominates in his character, and then he is never made radically better for its influence.
There is, in our nature, a disposition to indulgence, a secret desire to escape from labor, which, unless hourly combated, will overcome and destroy the best faculties of our minds and paralyze our most useful powers.
As you have learnt something of time, value and make a proper use of it. Once past, it knows no return; how necessary, then, that you spend it in improving your mind and fitting it for future happiness and usefulness.
Malcolm was a firm believer in the value and importance of our heritage. He believed that we have valuable and distinct cultural traditions which need to be institutionalized so that they can be passed on to our heirs.
As we celebrate the 100th birthday of Margaret Sanger, our outrageous and our courageous leader, we will probably find a number of areas in which we may find more about Margaret Sanger than we thought we wanted to know.
I proceed, gentlemen, to call your attention to the present state of insane persons confined within the commonwealth; in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens; chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.
American teens have the worst of all worlds ... Our children are bombarded and confronted with sexual messages, sexual exploitation, and all manner of sexual criticism. But our society is by and large sexually illiterate.
I looked over and saw this man on the extreme right aisle sort of galloping to the podium. He was tall, he was thin, and the way he was galloping it looked as though he was going someplace much more important than the podium.
I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus.
This is not a country that has had a tremendous sympathy for poor people, so I think that the notion that somehow we have slipped into an era in which poor people don't matter is not quite the way our history would define it.
Brains are still unfashionable for women to wear, and it has always been proof of women's superiority that the more intelligent a man is, the more women admire him, while the bigger fool a woman is, the more men run after her.
'Know,' says a wise writer, the historian of kings, 'Know the men that are to be trusted'; but how is this to be? The possession of knowledge involves both time and opportunities. Neither of these are 'handservants at command.'
Think how slow would be your progress in learning without printed books: you could study only manuscripts, and those necessarily must be very few in number. Learn from this to value your books, and always handle them with care.
The fact is that, in all prisons everywhere, cruelties on the one hand and injudicious laxity of discipline on the other have at times appeared and will, at intervals, be renewed except the most vigilant oversight is maintained.
[To a woman who claimed she'd rather be dead than unconfined and unfashionable:] My dear, if you continue to lace as tightly as you do now, you will not long have the privilege of choice. You will be both dead and out of fashion.
I would be cautious in embracing or rejecting doctrines. Had they been essential to our salvation, they would have been more explicitly declared in the Gospels, where we are so well taught the practice of every good word and work.
I was brought up to believe that a person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality. The term ‘hero’ irritates me greatly – the opposite is true – I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little.
I have little taste for fashionable dissipations, cards, and dancing; the theatre and tea parties are my aversion, and I look with little envy on those who find their enjoyment in such transitory delights, if delights they may be called.
The French, perhaps more than any other nation, cherish the memory of their dead by ornamenting their places of sepulture with the finest flowers, often renewing the garlands and replacing such plants as decay with vigorous and costly ones.
Steady, firm, and kind government of prisoners is the truest humanity and the best exercise of duty. It is with convicts as with children: unseasonable indulgence, indiscreetly granted, leads to mischiefs which we may deplore but cannot repair.
Reproductive freedom is critical to a whole range of issues. If we can't take charge of this most personal aspect of our lives, we can't take care of anything. It should not be seen as a privilege or as a benefit, but a fundamental human right.
Effective metaphor does more than shed light on the two things being compared. It actually brings to the mind's eye something that has never before been seen. It's not just the marriage ceremony linking two things; it's the child born from the union.
in proportion as my own discomfort has increased, my conviction of necessity to search into the wants of the friendless and afflicted has deepened. If I am cold, they too are cold; if I am weary, they are distressed; if I am alone, they are abandoned.
We are not sent into this world mainly to enjoy the loveliness therein, nor to sit us down in passive ease; no, we were sent here for action. The soul that seeks to do the will of God with a pure heart, fervently, does not yield to the lethargy of ease.
My mother was from Mississippi, or is from 'Mississippi;' my father was from Alabama. He speaks about conditions in Mississippi and Alabama. They were really the poster children for the bad public laws that segregated, according to race, in our country.
A virtuous character is likened to an unblemished flower. Piety is a fadeless bud that half opens on earth and expands through eternity. Sweetness of temper is the odor of fresh blooms, and the amaranth flowers of pure affection open but to bloom forever.
The lovely daisy, so justly celebrated by European poets, is not a native of our soil; we know it well, however, by cultivation in our gardens and green houses; besides, we are disposed to remember it for the sake of those who have sung its praises in immortal verse.
Being a person who has had plastic surgery and goes to the gym five days a week to work my muscles up so they don't look atrophied as a 60-year-old, I don't disparage people who want to maintain their appearance. But what I don't want is a society that tells me I have to.
What child has ever known the country and has not twined hundreds of fragrant wreaths with the yellow shining cowslip and the more frail and delicate violet - mingling here and there green leaves culled from the odorous eglantine, or, as we more commonly call it, sweetbriar.
Rules must be established and enforced, and, as numbers are increased in prisons, the necessity for vigilance increases. These rules, let it be understood, may be kindly while firmly enforced. I would never suffer any exhibition of ill-temper or an arbitrary exercise of authority.
The nurse is temporarily the consciousness of the unconscious, the love of life of the suicidal, the leg of the amputee, the eyes of the newly blind, a means of locomotion for the newborn , knowledge and confidence for the young mother, a voice for those too weak to speak, and so on.