💬 Quotes

"I wanted more sun and breeze, and for the great earth to expand my soul."

"To be beautiful is to be happy; those who are beautiful in heart are happy."

"Let me creep in among the grass and hide myself in the leaves, so that I may be filled with a deeper life."

"The soul-life is infinitely more than the bodily life; it is the reality, of which the body is only the shadow."

"Cleopatra possessed a fascinating combination of personal charm, high intellectual attainments, and an unbridled ambition for supreme power."

"In her interview with Caesar, she relied not merely on her rank as queen, but upon the irresistible fascination of her manners and her personal charms."

"The course of the Egyptian queen was always guided by policy rather than affection; her alliances were formed solely to aggrandize her kingdom and secure her own dominion."

"Antony, captivated by the splendor of her court and the magic of her presence, surrendered himself entirely to her influence, forgetting his duties and his honor at Rome."

"When she found that all her arts were powerless against the stern and inflexible policy of Octavius, she resolved to escape the degradation of a Roman triumph by a voluntary death."

"Thus terminated the career of one of the most remarkable sovereigns of antiquity—a woman whose beauty, talents, and misfortunes have rendered her name immortal."

"We are indebted to our friends for their sympathy, but the time has come for action, and we must work out our own salvation."

"Truth is stranger than fiction; and we often find incidents in real life which surpass the wildest creations of the novelist."

"My wife was a slave, and I was a slave, and though we were united as husband and wife, we had no legal right to each other, nor to our children."

"As my wife could easily pass for a white man, it occurred to us that she might travel as a sickly young gentleman, and I as her faithful slave."

"Slavery has no redeeming qualities; it brutalizes the master and degrades the slave, crushing out the divinest attributes of human nature."

"Though hunted like wild beasts through the land of liberty, we resolved to persevere, trusting in the God of the oppressed."

"I was hungry for books, new ways of looking and seeing."

"Whenever I went to the white stores, I tried to act like a non-person, to be as invisible as possible."

"My hunger for books ... had to be satisfied in secret, for to read was to invite suspicion and danger."

"I wanted to write because I wanted to find out who I was, what I felt, and what I thought about the world."