Gertrude Beasley > Quotes

“It was a mind slavery that kept her so unhappy.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“Not a single friend or relative came to see me graduate; I was sorry and glad too; sorry there was no one to pat me on the back, and glad that none of my family were there, for I should have wanted to drop dead each time one of them opened his mouth. I believe to many, this attitude would be inconceivable; it is difficult to explain how one suffers from it.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“Now a new era was dawning in my life; I could be absolutely happy in my room or the library alone. I was going to enjoy my study now.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“All of these various situations […] filled me with dark confusion. Mentally, I was sadness and anger and pride and ambition with a lot of competitiveness all shot through with fear.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“Watch me! From now on I’m going to tell people what it what. A wishy-washy life isn’t worth a damn!”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“I sank down every night on my knees at my bed and prayed, it seemed to me, as I had never prayed before. I don't remember what I said, but I think I was asking for strength, strength, and more strength. As far as I recall, I went on talking atheism to the girls and continued prayers while locked in my room.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“My home life was in every way a retrogression: there was no soul, no love, no intelligence.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“I was angry and would have liked to quarrel with her; that was a good thing to separate on; she believed one thing and I believed another; I had a right to stick to my opinion. Besides then I would be free and I would have all of my own money. But I thought again; she had about the hardest life I had ever heard of.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“He makes money and gives it to the Lord and pays the girls who work for him starvation wages. Do you call that Christianity? I call that slavery. Do you call that serving God? I call it thievery.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“I said quietly without knowing I was going to say it, "But, Mother, you have made many mistakes too,”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“My mother would quote the Bible in defense of her [seeking a divorce], letting her eyes show that there was something far worse than she had ever told in connection with my father, saying, “He that provideth not for his own household is worse than an infidel,” … “It says worse than an infidel.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“She always had meant to leave. She hadn’t done it because she thought it was such a disgrace; she had no place to take her children, and she was afraid he would kill her as he threatened. Twenty-five years of married criminality, official monogamous prostitution, between a “damn fool woman” and the “sorriest man that God ever let live” ended. [The divorce lawyer] had released her from her demon.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“This was the beginning of my various ambitions which have gradually consumed me during the last quarter of a century and virtually incapacitated me for supplying my quota of seven sons and six daughters to the state.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“I hoped she was having the child because she had loved and wanted it; and I prayed she would be happy. It was a terrible thing to bring a human being into the world under any circumstance; a tragedy, yes, a crime to bring one unloved, unwanted.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“Nearly all women who worked with their brains shared my difficulties.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“You have no right to take my bread and butter away from me merely because you disagree with,” I called out, pounding the table with my fist.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“Clothes were wonderful things; one ought always to wear a hat as saucy and pretty as mine before going to see an editor.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“The Socialists had always stood for woman suffrage and would continue to work for the women regardless of whether or not they received a single vote from the Women's Party. I knew whom I would vote for.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“Aw, we cayn’t be nobody no how,” she sighed. […] you’ve got to have the right kind of parents to be anything in this world. She wasn’t going to try to be anything except to just get along, what was the use? She had tried but she saw now; everything was against you.

I was incensed, as one is after receiving an unexpected blow or a dash of cold water.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“One evening, I sat in my room reading; it was the first time in my life I ever felt conscious that people were unnecessary to me. I had rather sit there, my feet on a chair near the radiator, reading, than talk to anyone.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“Ah God,' said she, "what a different woman I would-a been if ennybody had ever cared for me." I wanted to throw myself at her feet and clutch at her skirts, "But, Mother, I'm here: don't forget; I'm here," I wanted to cry out. Once when she talked like that I made a vow: "I will do something about it, I will tell, Mother; I will tell, I swear I will tell your story.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“[My university coursework] was all fed to me from an American silver spoon and calculated by my professors to make me a hundred percent American first; an educator and a human being second and third.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“Oh God, it had been hard, but she had been brave, had held out to the end; how I ever dared to be critical of a woman whom life had hurt and scarred as it had hurt my mother was incomprehensible.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“At times I doubted, too; all men were beasts or fools; the man could make love at the beginning but the woman was always let down and was heartbroken. I had seen enough of it and I wasn't going to be a fool. I wouldn't have had my mother and my sisters gossiping about me, as she and myself used to gossip about the others, for anything in the world.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“I told my friends at the Elinor Club how the men who talked with Ella Flagg Young trembled in their boots; it was my idea of a good time to see men afraid of a woman.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“Mrs. Sanger was a woman who would have understood my mother, I was sure.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“I was well aware from my first conscious moments, when I was about four years old, that the general idea of their mental superiority prevalent among men was fallacious.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“Education was a thing which you couldn’t take away from a person”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“I was not the kind of person to be entrusted with a gun; I might lose my head and use it sometime. The whole theory of guns, armaments in general, as a protection, was a fallacy; the idea was revolting.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years

“I used to fancy myself as a sort of Joseph for the family. I was going to be great and famous and rich and good. They were going to bow down to me and I would give gifts which would make them happy. [...] I was going to lead my seven brothers and five sisters to happiness and intelligence. I suppose it was only a desire to make them conform to my wishes, to give them souls and minds like my own.”
― Gertrude Beasley, My First Thirty Years