Frederick Douglass Quotes

With emptie hands men may no haukes lure.

And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero. That's the city

Hand me the world on a silver platter, and what good would it be?

Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.

An aphorism? Fire without flames. Understandable that no one tries to warm himself at it.

Maybe someday you will understand, that something for nothing is everybody's plan.

And if you find everything as soon as you look for it, you find it in vain, you look for it in vain.

Someday. That's a dangerous word. It's really just a code for 'never'.

Fey...a Scotch word...It means the kind of exalted happiness that comes before disaster. You know--it's too good to be true.

When I consider life, 't is all a cheat. Yet fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit; Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay. To-morrow 's falser than the former day; Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest With some new joys, cuts off what we possest. Strange cozenage! none would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And from the dregs of life think to receive What the first sprightly running could not give.

There is one appointed supreme executioner. Truly, trying to take the place of the supreme executioner is like trying to carve wood like a master carpenter. Of those who try to carve wood like a master carpenter, there are few who do not injure their hands.

True it is,/ That these are not the droids for which thou search'st. -Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi

Without comprehension, the immigrant would forever remain shut - a stranger in America. Until America can release the heart as well as train the hand of the immigrant, he would forever remain driven back upon himself, corroded by the very richness of the unused gifts within his soul.

To expect an impossibility is madness.

Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washèd it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

I can't compete with making promises you can't keep.

It's dangerous, son.' 'What's dangerous?' 'When a man goes outside his house to look for peace.

If "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers' hands

I once read about a guy who lost his arms in a fire. The nurse took pity on him and gave him a hand job. I don't even get that.

Every day there comes a moment when a person lays his hands in his lap and all his busyness collapses like ashes. The work accomplished is, from the soul's point of view, entirely imaginary.

Plough not the seas, sow not the sands,Leave off your idle pain;Seek other mistress for your minds,Love's service is in vain.

Despair is as hollow and deceptive as hope!