Emma > Emma's Quotes

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
― Albert Camus

“Live to the point of tears.”
― Albert Camus

“In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky — her grand old woods — her fertile fields — her beautiful rivers — her mighty lakes, and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked, my joy is soon turned to mourning. When I remember that all is cursed with the infernal actions of slaveholding, robbery and wrong, — when I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing.”
― Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
― Albert Camus

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
― Frederick Douglass

“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?

I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”
― Frederick Douglass

“It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
― Frederick Douglass

“Love me only for my actions, and I will grow stressed.
Love me only for my body, and I will grow paranoid.
Love me only for my words, and I will grow bitter.
Love me only for my soul, and I will grow.”
― Vironika Tugaleva

“My eldest brother, Sung, says trust is earned, that to give someone your trust is to give them them the knife to wound you. But Joon would counter that trust is faith; to trust someone is to believe in the goodness of people and the world that shapes them.”
― Axie Oh, The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea