Olive Schreiner
Olive Schreiner
Olive Schreinerwas a South African author, anti-war campaigner and intellectual. She is best remembered today for her novel The Story of an African Farm which has been highly acclaimed since its first publication in 1883 for the bold manner in which it deals with some of the burning issues of the day, including agnosticism, existential independence, individualism, the professional aspirations of women, and the elemental nature of life on the colonial frontier. In more recent studies she has also been...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth24 March 1855
accurately adapted beast carries cursed few finishing fitted found girls hardly human machines mark move name nicely pick places room seen small soul souls space tells till wide woman
Of all cursed places under the sun, where the hungriest soul can hardly pick up a few grains of knowledge, a girls boarding-school is the worst. They are called finishing schools, and the name tells accurately what they are. They finish everything but imbecility and weakness, and that they cultivate. They are nicely adapted machines for experimenting on the question, ''Into how little space a human being can be crushed?'' I have seen some souls so compressed that they would have fitted into a small thimble, and found room to move there -- wide room. A woman who has been for many years at one of those places carries the mark of the beast on her till she dies.
mom mother men
There was never a great man who had not a great mother.
fathers-day dream men
Our fathers had their dreams; we have ours; the generation that follows will have its own. Without dreams and phantoms man cannot exist.
strong heart mean
We all enter the world little plastic beings, with so much natural force, perhaps, but for the rest--blank; and the world tells uswhat we are to be, and shapes us by the ends it sets before us. To you it says--Work; and to us it says--Seem! To you it says--As you approximate to man's highest ideal of God, as your arm is strong and your knowledge great, and the power to labour is with you, so you shall gain all that human heart desires. To us it says--Strength shall not help you, nor knowledge, nor labour. You shall gain what men gain, but by other means. And so the world makes men and women.
wall iron kicks
Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can't bring down.
helping-others thinking people
I think if I were dying and I heard of an act of injustice, it would start me up to a moment's life again.
strong men doors
There is no door at which the hand of woman has knocked for admission into a new field of toil but there have been found on the other side the hands of strong and generous men eager to turn it for her, almost before she knocks.
sleep equality ties
We were equals once when we lay new-born babes on our nurse's knees. We will be equal again when they tie up our jaws for the last sleep.
humanity doe gone
Slavery may, perhaps, be best compared to the infantile disease of measles; a complaint which so commonly attacks the young of humanity in their infancy, and when gone through at that period leaves behind it so few fatal marks; but which when it normally attacks the fully developed adult becomes one of the most virulent and toxic of diseases, often permanently poisoning the constitution where it does not end in death.
moving blood race
We are a race of women that of old knew no fear and feared no death, and lived great lives and hoped great hopes; and if today some of us have fallen on evil and degenerate times, there moves in us yet the throb of the old blood.
sacred given feels
Love that has been given to you is too sacred a thing to be talked of to anyone ... except just to the person who is like part of you and who will feel it as you do.
moving school space
[Finishing schools] are nicely adapted machines for experimenting on the question, "Into how little space a human being can be crushed?" I have seen some souls so compressed that they would have fitted into a small thimble, and found room to move . . .
music beautiful wish
I am always thirsting for beautiful, beautiful, beautiful music. I wish I could make it. Perhaps there isn't any music on earth like what I picture to myself.
way curse jew
The nations which have received and in any way dealt fairly and mercifully with the Jew have prospered, and the nations that have tortured and oppressed him have written out their own curse.