Olive Schreiner Quotes

There can be many bars, wires that keep a person trapped. All of them don't have to have been created for the purpose of harming or caging the bird, but they still serve that function.

A bird on a tether, no matter how long the rope, can always be pulled back.

Of what use were wings to a man fast bound in chains of iron?

There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.

I have never in my life walked with a harness. The weight of the tether, makes it feel like I'm dragging an anchor behind me.

It's difficult to put into words what freedom feels like. You only know what freedom feels like if you know what it feels like to not be free.

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

A man is the prisoner of his power.

I really like cages.

300 was the biggest hurdle. They tried to hold us against our will.

What we know to be true is that comfort isn't always freedom. People confuse the two.

She'd never have allowed herself to be held by anything as mundane as a few bars and a reinforced door

A bird in a cage is not half a bird.

My cage has many rooms.

You can cage the songbird, but you can't make her sing. And you can trap the free bird, but you'll have to clip her wings.

For why trap what is already trapped? It is only in flight that we know the freedom of the bird

Hee is not free that drawes his chaine.

The horse that drawes after him his halter, is not altogether escaped.

Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty.

The freedom of birds is an insult to me.

A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.

No bird in a cage ever speaks. What is there to say? The sky is everywhere, churning above its head, blue and endless, calling out to it. But the caged bird can't answer anything except 'I cannot'.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.