Abolitionists

"Who that has human blood flowing in his veins, who that ever felt the warm gush of affection thrill his being, can hesitate whether to throw his weight into the balance of life and freedom, or that of chains, oppression or death?....to him who fears only your opposition...silence is consent. And silence where life and liberty is at stake, where by a timely protest we could stay the destroyer's hand, and do not do so, is as criminal as giving actual aid to the oppressor, for it answers his purpose..."

"What rights have women? …(they are) punished for breaking laws which they have no voice in making. All avenues to enterprise and honors are closed against them. If poor, they must drudge for a mere pittance— if of the wealthy classes, they must be dressed dolls of fashion — parlor puppets…"

"…There is 10 times more in the world than would maintain all in yet unknown luxury. Yet how much misery there is in our midst; not because there is not enough, but owing to the misdirection of it."

"We have heard a great deal of our Pilgrim Fathers…but who has heard of the Pilgrim Mothers? Did they not endure as many perils, encounter as many hardships, and do as much to form and fashion the institutions of New England as the Pilgrim Fathers? And were not their trials, and is not their glory equally great? Yet they are hardly remembered."

"Human rights include the rights of all, not only man, but woman, not only white but black; wherever there is a being called human, his rights are as full and expressive as his existence, and ought to be without limits or distinction of sex, country, or color…and only ignorance, superstition, and tyranny — both the basis and the influence of the Bible - deprive him of it."

"But the Bible, we are told, reveals this great mystery. Where Nature is dumb, and Man ignorant, Revelation speaks in the authoritative voice of prophecy."

"I am perfectly willing, nay, desirous, that the sentiments and principles I advocate should be known and criticized by the public; but I am not willing to have imputed to me sentiments which do not belong to me, and, believing that you do not willfully misrepresent me, take the liberty to correct some errors in regard to myself, in the account of the Rutland Convention, in your paper of this morning."

"I ask for a law of Divorce…to prevent the crimes and immoralities now practiced…too often under the name of marriage…I believe in true marriages, and therefore I ask for a law to free men and women from false ones."

"Suppose Jonathan Edwards had been born a woman; suppose William James, for that matter, had been born a woman? (The invalid seclusion of his sister Alice is suggestive.) Even from men, New England took its psychic toll; many of its geniuses seemed peculiar in one way or another, particularly along the lines of social intercourse. Hawthorne, until he married, took his meals in his bedroom, apart from the family. Thoreau insisted on the values both of solitude and of geographical restriction, boasting that "I have traveled much in Concord." Emily Dickinson-viewed by her bemused contemporary Thomas Higginson as "partially cracked," by the twentieth century as fey or pathological-has increasingly struck me as a practical woman, exercising her gift as she had to, making choices."

"To be really cosmopolitan a man must be at home even in his own country."

"Powerful racial prejudices? That was not true of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, or Norwood P. Hallowell, or George T. Garrison, or many other abolitionists and sons of abolitionists who became officers in black regiments. Indeed, the contrary was true. They had spent much of their lives fighting the race prejudice endemic in American society, sometimes at the risk of their careers and even their lives. That is why they jumped at the chance of help launch an experiment with black soldiers which they hoped would help African Americans."

"An Arab, by his earnest gaze, Has clothed a lovely maid with blushes; A smile within his eyelids plays And into words his longing gushes."

"A thousand years a poor man watched Before the gate of Paradise: But while one little nap he snatched, It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise?"

"With strength and patience all his grievous loads are borne, And from the world's rose-bed he only asks a thorn."

"A gray eye is a sly eye, And roguish is a brown one; Turn full upon me thy eye,— Ah, how its wavelets drown one! A blue eye is a true eye; Mysterious is a dark one, Which flashes like a spark-sun! A black eye is the best one."

"God's mills grind slow, But they grind woe."

"Fill up the goblet and reach to me some! Drinking makes wise, but dry fasting makes glum."

"In the rest of Nirvana all sorrows surcease: Only Buddha can guide to that city of Peace Whose inhabitants have the eternal release."

"Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason."

"The best aphorisms are pointed expressions of the results of observation, experience, and reflection. They are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. They furnish the largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass. About every weak point in human nature, or vicious spot in human life, there is deposited a crystallization of warning and protective proverbs."

"Beware the deadly fumes of that insane elation Which rises from the cup of mad impiety, And go, get drunk with that divine intoxication Which is more sober far than all sobriety."

"To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius, a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which first created it."

"Alcott’s response to the theory of natural selection was to reject its materialism out of hand. At the same time, he borrowed its outlines so as to imagine a world filled with creatures that had descended from original perfection. In essence he applied Platonic ideals to evolutionary theory. Even Agassiz, the most idealistic scientist in America, understood that this approach was nonsense."

"Most men give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain."

"Memory marks the horizon of our consciousness, imagination its zenith."

"Truth is the cry of all, but the game of the few."

"Evil is retributive: every trespass slips fetters on the will, holds the soul in durance till contrition and repentance restore it to liberty."

"When man seized the loadstone of science, the loadstar of superstition vanished in the clouds."

"Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness."

"The moon is a silver pin-head vast, That holds the heaven's tent-hangings fast."

"The less of routine, the more of life."

"Our ideals are our better selves."

"Without a mythology faith is impersonal and heartless."

"An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best."

"One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well."

"Divination seems heightened and raised to its highest power in woman."

"To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant."

"Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly; books and colleges at second-hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars: actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as these rise and fall."

"Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements."

"Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps; Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps."

"There is virtue in country houses, in gardens and orchards, fields, streams and groves, in rustic recreations and plain manners, that neither cities nor universities enjoy."

"Many can argue, not many converse."

"Ten poor men sleep in peace on one straw heap, as Saadi sings, But the immensest empire is too narrow for two kings."

"Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the most part, refuse to be written."

"Conceive of slaughter and flesh-eating in Eden."

"Truth is sensitive and jealous of the least encroachment upon its sacredness."

"In the theocracy of the soul majorities do not rule. God and the saints; against them the rabble of sinners, with clamorous voices and uplifted hand, striving to silence the oracle of the private heart. Beelzebub marshals majorities. Prophets and reformers are always special enemies of his and his minions. Multitudes ever lie. Every age is a Judas, and betrays its Messiahs into the hands of the multitude. The voice of the private, not popular heart, is alone authentic."

"There is a magic in free speaking, especially on sacred themes, most potent and resistless. It is refreshing, amidst the inane common-places bandied in pulpits and parlors, to hear a hopeful word from an earnest, upright soul. Men rally around it as to the lattice in summer heats, to inhale the breeze that flows cool and refreshing from the mountains, and invigorates their languid frames. Once heard, they feel a buoyant sense of health and hopefulness, and wonder that they should have lain sick, supine so long, when a word has power to raise them from their couch, and restore them to soundness. And once spoken, it shall never be forgotten; it charms, exalts; it visits them in dreams, and haunts them during all their wakeful hours. Great, indeed, is the delight of speech; sweet the sound of one’s bosom thought, as it returns laden with the fragrance of a brother’s approval."

"Ever present, potent, vigilant, in the breast of man, there is that which never became a party in his guilt, never consented to a wrong deed, nor performed one, but holds itself above all sin, impeccable, immaculate, immutable, the deity of the heart, the conscience of the soul, the oracle and interpreter, the judge and executor of the divine law."

"Believe, youth, despite all temptations, the oracle of deity in your own bosom. ’T is the breath of God’s revelations,—the respiration of the Holy Ghost in your breast. Be faithful, not infidel, to its intuitions,—quench never its spirit,—dwell ever in its omniscience. So shall your soul be filled with light, and God be an indwelling fact,—a presence in the depths of your being."