Bessie Emery Head Quotes

Life is a treacherous quicksand with no guarantee of safety anywhere. We can only try to grab what happiness we can before we are swept off into oblivion.

In a cold and loveless country like South Africa his warmth of heart and genuine friendliness is like a great roaring fire on the white icy wastes of the Antarctic.

They were grouped together for convenience, as it was one of the prison regulations that no black warder should be in charge of a political prisoner lest this prisoner convert him to his views. It never seemed to occur to the authorities that this very reasoning was the strength of Span One and a clue to the strange terror they aroused in the warders.

“they cannot exist unless they can live in the village insuch a way that the changes that they bring about are necessary … in determining who they are

Who am I? What am I? In past and present, the answer lies in Africa; in part it lies within the whole timeless, limitless, eternal universe. How can I discover the meaning and purpose of my country if I do not first discover the meaning and purpose of my own life? Today there are a thousand labels. One of them is 'crazy crank'. I do not mind being a 'crazy crank', as long as I am sure that I am a crank of my own making, as long as I resist environmental, societal, and political attempts to control and suppress my mind. [A Personal View of the Survival of the Unfittest,

Above all the necessities of life, human beings need love and it is often the one thing most denied to them.

He sat quite still, staring ahead with calm, empty eyes, and he looked so lordly for all his tattered coat and rough cowhide shoes that Makhaya smiled and walked up to him and greeted him.

There's only one way to make yourself shock-proof. Do not be impressed by evil and do not be impressed by good.

Life is not in bits and pieces. It is a magnificent, rhythmic, pulsating symphony.

Most men were waiting for the politicians to sort out their private agonies.

Why should men be brought up with a false sense of superiority over women? People can respect me if they wish, but only if I earn it.

Once a man involves himself with women there's always some kind of retribution. They're the most vengeful creatures on this earth.

It was the mentality of the old hag that ruined a whole continent - some sort of clinging, ancestral, tribal belief that a man was nothing more than a grovelling sex organ, that there was no such thing as privacy of soul and body, and that no ordinary man would hesitate to jump on a mere child.

You don't realize the point at which you become evil.

...a door silently opened on the small, dark airless room in which their souls had been shut for a long time. The wind of freedom, which was blowing throughout the world for all people, turned and flowed into the room.