Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart, and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.

—Frederick Douglass

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About Frederick Douglass

Portrait of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was "the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century".

More quotations from Frederick Douglass

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

—Frederick Douglass

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

—Frederick Douglass

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

—Frederick Douglass

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Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and this will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.

—Frederick Douglass

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People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.

—Frederick Douglass

More quotations tagged with “relief”

The real existence of an enemy upon whom one can foist off everything evil is an enormous relief to one's conscience. You can then at least say, without hesitation, who the devil is; you are quite certain that the cause of your misfortune is outside, and not in your own attitude.

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In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud.… I have the immense joy of being a member of a race in which God became incarnate.… There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

—Thomas Merton

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Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for joy.

—Pema Chödrön

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Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

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History

23 Nov 2014 Added