I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.
- Anonymous, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) [full text]
There runs in my veins both English and Irish blood. On the paternal side I can only trace my ancestors back to the early Quakers of Baltimore. On the maternal side I know less, for it is only said that my great grand-mother was a handsome, witty, Irish-woman. For some reason, I know not what, I have always liked the humble, honest, witty Irish people, be they Catholic or Protestant.
- Z.S. Hastings, Autobiography of Z.S. Hastings, Written For His Boys (1911) [full text]
When the day came for me to be named, mother said, “He looks like my brother Zachariah,” but father said, “He looks like my brother Simpson.” “All right”, said mother, “we will just christen him Zachariah Simpson.” And that is my name unto this day.
- Z.S. Hastings, Autobiography of Z.S. Hastings, Written For His Boys (1911) [full text]
![One man came to me with his left hand bandaged up. He inquired if I was badly hurt.
“Well,” says he, “you’re in luck to be alive now. I took deliberate aim at you as you stood with your back towards me while loading your rifle. My —— shotgun burst and blowed off three of my fingers, and that is what saved you.”
In his eagerness to kill a Yankee, he had put too heavy a charge in his gun, and it had burst just where he gripped the barrels with his left hand.
- Stanley Waterloo (ed.), The Story of a Strange Career: Being the Autobiography of a Convict (1902) [full text]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l88t0xi62m1qamjklo1_500.jpg)
One man came to me with his left hand bandaged up. He inquired if I was badly hurt.
“Well,” says he, “you’re in luck to be alive now. I took deliberate aim at you as you stood with your back towards me while loading your rifle. My —— shotgun burst and blowed off three of my fingers, and that is what saved you.”
In his eagerness to kill a Yankee, he had put too heavy a charge in his gun, and it had burst just where he gripped the barrels with his left hand.
- Stanley Waterloo (ed.), The Story of a Strange Career: Being the Autobiography of a Convict (1902) [full text]
Only the Algerian and Moorish women seemed to be without gaiety. They were all dressed alike, a light gauzy dress and a long veil of the same material covering the head and face, leaving only the eyes uncovered. The rich wore shoes; the poor went barefooted. The young had smooth skins on their wrists; the old were wrinkled. That was the only way we could tell the difference between them. As to their beauty, we had no means of judging.
- Anonymous, Stanley Waterloo (ed.), The Story of a Strange Career: Being the Autobiography of a Convict (1902) [full text]
Poor mother! the theatre was to her imagination but a beautiful vestibule leading to a place of wickedness and general wrong-doing!
- Clara Morris, Life on the Stage (1901) [full text]
We spent an hour upon the sunny shore and I said, “I would like to live here always, and perhaps some day I will.” I was always discovering places where I would like to spend my whole life.
- William Butler Yeats, Reveries over Childhood and Youth (1916) [full text]
It is not that I have accomplished too few of my plans, for I am not ambitious; but when I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
- William Butler Yeats, Reveries over Childhood and Youth (1916) [full text]
My first memories are fragmentary and isolated and contemporaneous, as though one remembered vaguely some early day of the Seven Days. It seems as if time had not yet been created, for all are connected with emotion and place and without sequence.
- William Butler Yeats, Reveries over Childhood and Youth (1916) [full text]
![The sightless eyes have vivid visions. Theirs is the light in darkness which stirred the soul of a Milton with a “gift divine;” inspired a Homer with the “fire and frenzy” which crowned an Iliad and an Odyssey, the master pieces of Epic verse; gave to the antique and traditional literature of the Celtic race its meteoric brilliancy, and produced the weird, wondrous sublimity of an Ossian.
- Mary L. Day Arms, The World As I Have Found It (1878) [full text]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l631lp2GLZ1qamjklo1_500.jpg)
The sightless eyes have vivid visions. Theirs is the light in darkness which stirred the soul of a Milton with a “gift divine;” inspired a Homer with the “fire and frenzy” which crowned an Iliad and an Odyssey, the master pieces of Epic verse; gave to the antique and traditional literature of the Celtic race its meteoric brilliancy, and produced the weird, wondrous sublimity of an Ossian.
- Mary L. Day Arms, The World As I Have Found It (1878) [full text]
![Oh, that breakfast! The sight fairly took my breath for a moment, and I no longer regretted the delay as I feasted my eyes upon the clean and inviting table, with its plentiful supply of creamy biscuit, golden yellow butter, ham and eggs, baked potatoes and steaming coffee; but, as I gazed, even though hungry, worn out and reduced in flesh, a full sense of the kindness exhibited almost caused me to break down utterly and my appetite failed me for the moment.
- Captain S.A. Swiggett, The Bright Side of Prison Life: Experiences, In Prison and Out, of an Involuntary Sojourner in Rebeldom (1897) [full text]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4zc7tohok1qamjklo1_500.jpg)
Oh, that breakfast! The sight fairly took my breath for a moment, and I no longer regretted the delay as I feasted my eyes upon the clean and inviting table, with its plentiful supply of creamy biscuit, golden yellow butter, ham and eggs, baked potatoes and steaming coffee; but, as I gazed, even though hungry, worn out and reduced in flesh, a full sense of the kindness exhibited almost caused me to break down utterly and my appetite failed me for the moment.
- Captain S.A. Swiggett, The Bright Side of Prison Life: Experiences, In Prison and Out, of an Involuntary Sojourner in Rebeldom (1897) [full text]
On Ernest Hemingway:
There is something about Mr. Hemingway that makes one think of a small boy—a rather mischievous small boy whose pockets are full of bits of string, old rusty nails, chewing gum, and maybe a pet toad or two. A small boy hiding behind a big, bushy beard.
- Gertrude Lawrence, A Star Danced (1945) [full text]
When I reached the house, I went in directly to Miss Betsey. I found her in great distress; and she cried out as soon as she saw me, “Oh, Mary! my father is going to sell you all to raise money to marry that wicked woman. You are my slaves, and he has no right to sell you; but it is all to please her.”
- Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831) [full text]
After supper, the aunt told her nieces to shew me to my room, and, as may well be supposed, we spent a most delightful night. After that they took the agreeable duty by turns, and in order to avoid any surprise in case the aunt should take it into her head to pay them a visit, we skilfully displaced a part of the partition, which allowed them to come in and out of my room without opening the door. But the good lady believed us three living specimens of virtue, and never thought of putting us to the test.
- Giacomo Casanova, Memoirs of Casanova (c.1790) [full text]
What is a kiss? Is it not an ardent desire to inhale a portion of the being we love?
- Giacomo Casanova, Memoirs of Casanova (c.1790) [full text]
