jacob graham > Recent Status Updates

"The business of self-command she settled very easily;—with strong affections it was impossible, with calm ones it could have no merit. That her sister's affections were calm, she dared not deny, though she blushed to acknowledge it; and of the strength of her own, she gave a very striking proof, by still loving and respecting that sister, in spite of this mortifying conviction."

". . . [T]here is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions."

"Margaret fancied that he could not be well; but in answer to some enquiry of hers as to his health, he sent her a short note, saying there was an old-fashioned complaint called the spleen . . . but that he should like to indulge himself in grumbling, without being obliged to send a bulletin every time."

". . . [W]hen [Scrooge] thought that such another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have called him father, and been a spring-time in the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed."

"They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again."

". . . [S]he might be unhappy if she liked. For months past, all her personal cares and troubles had had to be stuffed away into a dark cupboard; but now she had leisure to take them out, and mourn over them, and study their nature, and seek the true method of subduing them into the elements of peace . . . Now, once for all she would consider them, and appoint to each of them its right work in her life."

2/2: "'Some time, if I live to be an old woman, I may sit over the fire, and, looking into the embers, see the life that might have been,' . . . She went out, going rapidly towards the country, and trying to drown reflection by swiftness of motion."

1/2: "'What has happened to make me so morbid to-day? I do not know. I only know I cannot help it. I must give way sometimes. No, I will not though . . . I will not think of myself and my own position. I will not examine into my own feelings. It would be of no use now . . .'"

2/2: "Courthouses provided separate Bibles. Bars provided separate stools. Post offices mandated separate windows. Playgrounds had separate swings. In Birmingham, for a black child to play checkers with a white child in a public park became a crime. Slavery had ended; segregation had only begun."

1/2: "Political equality had been possible, in the South, only at the barrel of a gun. As soon as federal troops withdrew . . . the era of black men's enfranchisement came to a violent and terrible end . . . All-white legislatures began passing . . . Jim Crow laws, that segregated blacks from whites in every conceivable public place . . ."

"I reckon . . . by-and-by they'll find out, tyrants makes liars."

"Miss Hale might love another—was indifferent and contemptuous to him—but he would yet do her faithful acts of service of which she should never know. He might despise her, but the woman whom he had once loved should be kept from shame; and shame it would be . . . to stand and acknowledge her reason for desiring darkness rather than light."

"There is no justice in love, no proportion . . . in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence?

"I might seem to be comparing something great and holy with a minor and ordinary thing, that is, love of God with mortal love. But I just don't see them as separate things at all. If we can be divinely fed with a morsel and divinely blessed with a touch, then the terrible pleasure we find in a particular face can certainly instruct us in the nature of the very grandest love."

2/2: "In mourning [Lincoln] . . . Americans deferred a different grief, a vaster and more dire reckoning with centuries of suffering and loss, not captured by any camera, not settled by any amendment . . . millions of men, women, and children, stolen, shackled, hunted, whipped . . . and buried in unmarked graves . . . With Lincoln's death, it was as if millions of people had been crammed into his tomb . . ."

1/2: "With the nation still draped in black, the Thirteenth Amendment, Lincoln's last legacy, went to the states . . . A great debate had been ended. A terrible war had been won. Slavery was over. But the unfinished work of a great nation remained undone: the struggle for equality had only just begun."

". . . [A]ll this has given me a new glimpse of the ongoingness of the world. We fly forgotten as a dream, certainly, leaving the forgetful world behind us to trample and mar and misplace everything we have ever cared for. That is just the way of it, and it is remarkable."

2/2: "It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a doctrine, words to that effect. I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment."

1/2: "So my advice is this—don't look for proofs . . . They are never sufficient to the question, and they're always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp . . . 'Let your works so shine before men,' etc."

"By May of 1861, the Confederacy comprised . . . 12 million people, including 4 million slaves, and 4 million white women who were disenfranchised. It rested on the foundational belief that a minority governs a majority. 'The condition of slavery is with us nothing but a form of civil government for a class of people not fit to govern themselves,' said Jefferson Davis."

"'Does it seem right to you . . . that there should be no common language between us? That there should be no way to bring a drop of water to those of us who languish in the flames, or who will? Granting your terms? That between us and you there is a great gulf fixed? How can capital-T Truth not be communicable?'"