When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant. Agnes Smedley More Quotes by Agnes Smedley More Quotes From Agnes Smedley Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe. Agnes Smedley spy russia safe To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty. Agnes Smedley sake beautiful beauty Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man. I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys. Agnes Smedley girl fighting boys I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater. Agnes Smedley living-on volcanoes feels I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman. Friendship is far more human. Agnes Smedley belief men sex I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter. Agnes Smedley bitter bitterness hours Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man ... the highest joy is to fight by the side of those who for any reason of their own making or ours, are unable to develop to full human stature. Agnes Smedley fighting joy men There are many men - such as those often to be found among the Indians - who are refined until they have qualities often attributed to the female sex. Yet they are men, and strong ones. Agnes Smedley strong men sex There's something dreadfully decisive about a beheading. Agnes Smedley dying death No one yet knows what a man's province is, and how far that province, as conceived of today, is artificial. Agnes Smedley artificial today men I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be. Agnes Smedley masculine may men But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family. I forgot the songs they sung - and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue; I was ashamed of them and their ways of life. But now - yes, I love them; they are a part of my blood; they, with all their virtues and their faults, played a great part in forming my way of looking at life. Agnes Smedley family song years But settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called. Agnes Smedley color adventure enemy Yet it is awful to love a person who is a torture to you. And a fascinating person who loves you and won't hear of anything but your loving him and living right by his side through all eternity! Agnes Smedley living-right awful love-you I believe only in money, not in love or tenderness. Love and tenderness meant only pain and suffering and defeat. I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money. Agnes Smedley pain money believe Like all my family and class, I considered it a sign of weakness to show affection; to have been caught kissing my mother would have been a disgrace, and to have shown affection for my father would have been a disaster. Agnes Smedley fathers-day family mother New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.... Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own. But here in New York I was ignorant, insignificant, unimportant--one in millions whose destiny concerned no one. New York did not even know of my existence. Nor did it care. Agnes Smedley hopeful destiny new-york My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike. She said little, especially when my father or the men who worked for him were about I remember her instinctive and unhesitating sympathy for the miners. Agnes Smedley mother sympathy father More and more do I see that only a successful revolution in India can break England's back forever and free Europe itself. It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international. Agnes Smedley successful forever europe Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.... I was learning that books and diagrams can be evil things if they deaden the mind of man and make him blind or cynical before subjection of any kind. Agnes Smedley education men book
