Slave Vessel Quotes

Let me begin with a caveat to any and all who find these pages. Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them. If you, dear reader, have an African hue and find yourself led toward water with vanishing shores, seize your freedom by any means necessary. And cultivate distrust of the colour pink. Pink is taken as the colour of innocence, the colour of childhood, but as it spills across the water in the light of the dying sun, do not fall into its pretty path. There, right underneath, lies a bottomless graveyard of children, mothers and men. I shudder to imagine all the Africans rocking in the deep. Every time I have sailed the seas, I have had the sense of gliding over the unburied.
Some people call the sunset a creation of extraordinary beauty, and proof of God's existence. But what benevolent force would bewitch the human spirit by choosing pink to light the path of a slave vessel? Do not be fooled by the pretty colour, and do not submit to its beckoning. ~ Lawrence Hill

The tapping grows insistent, and I turn, intending to tell off the Cadet. Instead, I'm faced with a slave-girl looking up at me through impossibly long eyelashes. A heated, visceral shock flares through me at the clarity of her dark gold eyes. For a second, I forget my name.
I've never seen her before, because if I had, I'd remember. Despite the heavy silver cuffs and high, painful-looking bun that mark all of Blackcliff's drudges, nothing about her says slave. Her black dress fits her like a glove, sliding over every curve in a way that makes more than one head turn. Her full lips and fine, straight nose would be the envy of most girls, Scholar or not. I stare at her, realize I'm staring, tell myself to stop staring, and then keep staring. My breath falters, and my body, traitor that is, tugs me forward until there are only inches between us.

"Asp-aspirant Veturius."

It's the way she says my name - like it's something to fear - that brings me back to myself. Pull it together, Veturius. I step away, appalled at myself when I see the terror in her eyes.

"What is it?" I ask calmly. ~ Sabaa Tahir

The implicit social contract is that upper-class girls will keep their virtue, while young men will find satisfaction in the brothels. And the brothels will be staffed with slave girls trafficked from Nepal or Bangladesh or poor Indian villages. As long as the girls are uneducated, low-caste peasants like Meena, society will look the other way - just as many antebellum Americans turned away from the horrors of slavery because the people being lashed looked different from them. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

Scottish philosopher William Drummond, read: "He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot reason is a fool; he who dares not reason is a slave. ~ Jonathan Eig

Clay is moulded to make a vessel, but the utility of the vessel lies in the space where there is nothing ... Thus, taking advantage of what is, we recognize the utility of what is not. ~ Laozi

When adversity threatens to paralyze us, we need to reassert control by finding a new direction in which to invest psychic energy, a direction that lies outside the reach of external forces. When every aspiration is frustrated, a person still must seek a meaningful goal around which to organize the self. Then, even though that person is objectively a slave, subjectively he is free. Solzhenitsyn ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

When Judge Douglas says that whoever, or whatever community, wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong. ~ Abraham Lincoln

As a people pleaser you need to learn to set boundaries and love people without being their slave. Only please people to the level they please you. ~ Tracy Malone

It's better to die free, than live as a slave. ~ F. Douglass

The world I grew up in was a brutal one. The murder rate was once seven people for every hundred thousand. The average American on minimum wage could barely afford to keep themselves alive on canned food. Millions died over private oil fortunes. Wealthy men and women ran the world for profit. Fools and charlatans got into our Parliaments and set the world on fire. We had everything on paper - checks, balances, freedom, democracy - and yet to live was to be a slave. ~ Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

Writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world. It's ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You don't have to worry about learning things. The fire of one's art burns all the impurities from the vessel that contains it. ~ James Lee Burke

The thought occurred to me that I was in danger of becoming a slave to a tiger as well. Hah! I'd probably like it too. I rolled my eyes at the thought. I disgust myself. I'm so darn weak! I hated the idea that all he'd have to do was crook his finger at me, beckon me to come to him, and I probably would. The fiercely independent side of me flared up. That's it! No more! I'm going to talk it all out with him when we get back and hope that we can still be friends.
This was pretty much my line of thought for the entire trip home. I'd daydream and then stop, lecture myself, and repeat my stubborn mantra. I tried to read, but I kept rereading the same paragraph over and over. Eventually, I gave up and napped a little. ~ Colleen Houck

Dooku chose his next words carefully. "Qui-Gon returned from Tatooine with a former slave boy. According to the boy's mother, the boy had no father. ~ James Luceno

You're a - you're a - "
Say it, boy. Demon of fire. Monster of smoke. Devil of sand and ash. Servant of Nardukha, Daughter of Ambadya, the Nameless, the Faceless, the Limitless. Slave of the Lamp. Jinni.
". . . a girl!" he finishes. ~ Jessica Khoury

Andy was receptive, like a deep vessel into which life was poured. If this terrible particular thing hadn't been poured into her, she would have been happier
it goes without saying
but less of a person. She was filled out by her fate. I actually think that this is quite rare, the capacity to become the whole shape of the accidents that happen to you. ~ Tessa Hadley

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow ALL the governed an
equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-government. ~ Abraham Lincoln

1845, when the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society declared that any slave owner would be disqualified from consideration for missionary service, Baptist churches in the South seceded and formed the Southern Baptist Convention so that members would not have to choose between their slaves and their calling to be missionaries. ~ Robert P. Jones

The Tao, when brightest seen, seems light to lack;
Who progress in it makes, seems drawing back;
Its even way is like a rugged track.
Its highest virtue from the vale doth rise;
Its greatest beauty seems to offend the eyes;
And he has most whose lot the least supplies.
Its firmest virtue seems but poor and low;
Its solid truth seems change to undergo;
Its largest square doth yet no corner show
A vessel great, it is the slowest made;
Loud is its sound, but never word it said;
A semblance great, the shadow of a shade. ~ Lao-Tzu

Master-morality and Slave-morality. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escap'd shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances. ~ David Hume

Don't be a salary slave! If you are going to do anything in this world, you must start before you are forty, before your period of initiative has ended. Do it now! ~ Robert Cochrane

Heaven would that she these gifts should have, and I to live and die her slave. ~ William Shakespeare

East of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, of Concord village, whobuilt his slave a house, and gave him permission to live in Walden Woods;MCato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last. He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Vanity is the most despotic and iniquitous of masters, and I can never be the slave of my own vices. ~ George Sand

She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg: she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver. ~ Angela Carter

Feel free to become a slave to your own clone. And mine. Remember, you can never have too many lovers who look exactly the same as me. ~ Jarod Kintz

For he who can foresee with his mind is by nature intended to be lord and master; and he who can work only with his body is by nature a slave.

The slave is to the master what the body is to the mind. ~ Will Durant

Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force. ~ Joseph Joubert

Dancing, as Fred Astaire said, is next to ditch-digging. You sweat and you slave and the audience doesn't think you have a brain in your head. ~ Ann Miller

Better a sovereign in squalor than a slave in splendor. ~ Donald James

Women, who are the prime victims of religion, and perhaps in some, stockholm syndrome effect, often form the most fervent advocates of the very thing that degrades them. I believe that in the end, it will be women who will turn this around. This should be the final stage of feminism. For a feminist to still believe in god is like a freed slave still living on the plantation. ~ Matthew Chapman

No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion. ~ James Burgh

It is the poor man who clenches so tightly to the gold he is given - for fear of losing it. The man of wealth spends his gold freely to accomplish his will in the world. It is the same with life.'
Suddenly ashamed of my conspicuous poverty, I lowered my eyes. But Scatha placed a hand beneath my chin and raised my head. 'Cling too tightly to your life and you will lose it, my Reluctant Warrior. You must become the master of your life, not its slave. ~ Stephen R. Lawhead

I love drawing on lead. Romans used to curse each other with sheets of it. My slave would come slide the sheet under your door with a curse on it. They had amazing writing and drawings on them, and they survive to this day since lead is so stable. ~ Shea Hembrey

But I don't have any confidence ."
"Why not ?"
"Because I have no sense of self . I have no personality , no brilliant color . I have nothing to offer . That's always been my problem . I feel like an empty vessel . I have a shape , I guess , as a container but there's nothing inside . ~ Haruki Murakami

Work hard and become a leader; be lazy and become a slave. ~ Anonymous

America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. ~ Pat Buchanan

The quality and virtue of a slave is invisibility. The powerless need to be invisible even to themselves. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Look at you, being all romantic."
"I'm always romantic," he says, kissing my neck. "Because it's impossible to be anything but a lovestruck slave around you. ~ Karina Halle

A well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave. ~ Curt Flood

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave. ~ Karl Kraus

I am enormously proud to be an American. I would say that the things that our corporate-controlled government has done at best are shameful and at worst genocidal-but there's an incredible and a permanent culture of resistance in this country that I'm very proud to be a part of. It's not the tradition of slave-owningfounding fathers, it's the tradition of the Frederick Douglasses, the Underground Railroads, the Chief Josephs, the Joe Hills, and the Huey P. Newtons. There's so much to be proud of when you're American that's hidden from you. The incredible courage and bravery of the union organizers in the late 1800's and early 1900's-that's amazing. People of get tricked into going overseas and fighting Uncle Sam's Wall Street wars, but these are people who knew what they were fighting for here at home. I think that that's so much more courageous and brave. ~ Tom Morello

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

There may be troubled waters along the many paths my life shall take, but only I as a man, may keep my vessel afloat, and guide myself straight. ~ Robert M. Hensel

His foreparents came to America in immigrant ships. My foreparents came to America in slave ships. But whatever the original ships, we are both in the same boat tonight. ~ Jesse Jackson

Never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvesttime, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A ~ Frederick Douglass

The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true! ~ Danny Kaye

Soul-force comes only through God's grace and never descends upon a man who is a slave to lust. ~ Mahatma Gandhi