Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man.
AGNES SMEDLEYLike 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.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
-
-
I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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 SMEDLEY -
I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
More and more do I see that only a successful revolution in India can break England’s back forever and free Europe itself.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I was learning that books and diagrams can be evil things if they deaden the mind of man and make him blind or cynical before subjection of any kind.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I forgot the songs they sung – and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Yet it is awful to love a person who is a torture to you. And a fascinating person who loves you and won’t hear of anything but your loving him and living right by his side through all eternity!
AGNES SMEDLEY -
She said little, especially when my father or the men who worked for him were about I remember her instinctive and unhesitating sympathy for the miners.
AGNES SMEDLEY