Like all my family and class, I considered it a sign of weakness to show affection; to have been caught kissing my mother would have been a disgrace, and to have shown affection for my father would have been a disaster.
AGNES SMEDLEYFriendship is far more human.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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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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I was ashamed of them and their ways of life. But now – yes, I love them; they are a part of my blood; they, with all their virtues and their faults, played a great part in forming my way of looking at life.
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Thousands of women are crushed and made inarticulate by that system and never develop as their natures would force them to develop were they in a decent environment.
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Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
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I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
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I believe only in money, not in love or tenderness. Love and tenderness meant only pain and suffering and defeat.
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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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To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.
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There are many men – such as those often to be found among the Indians – who are refined until they have qualities often attributed to the female sex. Yet they are men, and strong ones.
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But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family.
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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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When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
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The highest joy is to fight by the side of those who for any reason of their own making or ours, are unable to develop to full human stature.
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Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man.
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For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
AGNES SMEDLEY