I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
AGNES SMEDLEYIt was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own.
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I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.
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Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
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But here in New York I was ignorant, insignificant, unimportant–one in millions whose destiny concerned no one. New York did not even know of my existence. Nor did it care.
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I joined another circle and the leader gave us a little leaflet in very small print, asking us to read it carefully and then come prepared to ask questions.
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So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital.
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Friendship is far more human.
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Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
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And the woman who could win the respect of man was often the woman who could knock him down with her bare fists and sit on him until he yelled for help.
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I forgot the songs they sung – and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue.
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Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man.
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I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
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There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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But settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called.
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When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
AGNES SMEDLEY






