When he was twenty-three or twenty-four my father began to learn German and read philosophy in his spare hours, which did not look as though he were destined to remain long on board ship!
Edward Carpenter
- More quotations by Activist
Edward Carpenter quotes
A socialist meeting had been announced for 3 p.m. in Trafalgar Square, the authorities, probably thinking Socialism a much greater terror than it really was, had vetoed the meeting and drawn a ring of police, two deep, all round the interior part of the Square.
Do not think too much of the dead husk of your friend, or mourn too much over it, but send your thoughts out towards the real soul or self which has escaped - to reach it.
Early in 1883, as I have said, I gave my first lecture on social questions, and from that time forward I spoke on these subjects.
Early in 1888 one or two of us got together to establish our own Sheffield Socialist Society.
For so, surely you will cast a light of gladness upon his onward journey, and contribute your part towards the building of that kingdom of love which links our earth to heaven.
Great success in examinations does naturally not as a rule go with originality of thought.
His early life in the Navy had given my father that honest, somewhat simple, cast of mind which belongs to sea-faring folk.
I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don't know exactly why I didn't.
I should like these few words to be read over the grave when my body is placed in the earth; for though it is possible I may be present and conscious of what is going on, I shall not be able to communicate.
I was in the Square at the time. The crowd was a most good-humoured, easy going, smiling crowd; but presently it was transformed. A regiment of mounted police came cantering up.
IN April 1882 my father died; and I was at once whirled out of my land of dreams into a very different sphere.
In the summer of '84 I went again to the United States, my chief object again being to see Whitman - though I had also friends to visit.
IT is curious that, with my somewhat antinomian tendencies, I should have gone to Trinity Hall - which was, and is, before all a Law College - and should thus have been thrown into close touch with the legal element in life.
Making a choice is like backing a horse-in a hundred years, they may decide you picked wrongly.
My ideas had been taking a socialistic shape for many years; but they were lacking in definite outline.
One could hardly of course expect that originality and the pigeon-hole mind should go together.
The general fact of surplus value, namely that the workmen does not get the full value of his labours, and that he is taken advantage of by the capitalist, is obvious.
The other thing that happened in 1883 was my reading of Thoreau's Walden.
We lived within two hundred yards of the sea, and its voice was in our ears night and day.
Whatever the practical value of the Walden experiment may be, there is no question that the book is one of the most vital and pithy ever written.
When he was twenty-three or twenty-four my father began to learn German and read philosophy in his spare hours, which did not look as though he were destined to remain long on board ship!
Where there had been only jeers or taunts at first, crowds come to listen with serious and sympathetic men.
With my somewhat vague aspiring mind, to be imprisoned in the rude details of a most material life was often irksome.
Similiar authors
Emma Goldman
Wilfred Grenfell
Jim Hightower
Coretta Scott King
Lane Kirkland
John Gates
Russell Means
Jean Moulin
A. J. Muste
Ernst Zundel