Bessie Emery Head Quotes

…the Tswana language [like] the bush, [belongs] to all Batswana people

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

I was born on the sixty of July, 1937, in the Pietermaritzburg Mental Hospital, in South Africa. The reason for my peculiar birthplaces was that my mother was white, and she had acquired me from a black man. She was judged insane, and committed to the mental hospital while pregnant. Her name was Bessie Emery and I consider it the only honor South African officials ever did me—naming me after this unknown, lovely, and unpredictable woman."

The body is a positive thing, and love without a body is negative, useless, purposeless. [Where is the Hour of the Beautiful Dancing of Birds in the Sun-wind?,

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.

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

You know, comrades,” he said, “I’ve got Hannetjie. I’ll betray him tomorrow.”

The year ended in a roar of pain.

Poor people are poor because they don't know how to get rich.

A basically timid and cowardly person dare not presume to speak for others. He can only speak for himself. [A Personal View of the Survival of the Unfittest,

Therefore the Good God cast one last look at Makhaya, whom he intended revenging almightily for his silent threat to knock him down. He would so much entangle this stupid young man with marriage and babies and children that he would always have to think, not twice but several hundred times, before he came to knocking anyone down.

In this country there is a great tolerance of evil. It is because of death that we tolerate evil. All meet death in the end, and because of death we make allowance for evil though we do not like it.

I don't know these people but my search for a faith has taught me that life is a fire in which each burns until it is time to close the shop.

There seemed to be ancient, ancestral lines drawn around the African man which defined his loyalties, responsibilities, and even the duration of his smile.

Most men want to achieve great victories ... But I am only looking for a woman.