Mary Antin famous quotes

04-14-2025

We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.
-- Mary Antin

#Mom #Mother #Spiritual
It is only that my illusion is more real to me than reality. And so do we often build our world on an error, and cry out that the universe is falling to pieces, if any one but lift a finger to replace the error by truth.
-- Mary Antin

#Real #Fall #Errors
His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day.
-- Mary Antin

#Struggle #School #Writing
The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them.
-- Mary Antin

#Father #Cooking #Tin
A characteristic thing about the aspiring immigrant is the fact that he is not content to progress alone. Solitary success is imperfect success in his eyes. He must take his family with him as he rises.
-- Mary Antin

#Eye #Progress #Facts
A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession. A true man finds so much work to do that he has no time to contemplate his yesterdays; for to-day and to-morrow are here, with their impatient tasks. The world is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs masterpieces.
-- Mary Antin

#Men #Yesterday #Tasks
A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession.
-- Mary Antin

#Bed #Confession #Autobiography
I have so little mastered the art of tranquil living that wherever I go I trail storm clouds of drama around me.
-- Mary Antin

#Art #Drama #Clouds
What we get in steerage is not the refuse, but the sinew and bone of all the nations.
-- Mary Antin

#Bones #Refuse
There is never a Jewish community without its scholars, but where Jews may not be both intellectuals and Jews, they prefer to remain Jews.
-- Mary Antin

#Community #May #Scholar
The past was only my cradle, and now it cannot hold me, because I am grown too big.
-- Mary Antin

#Past #Cradle #Bigs
I want now to be of today. It is painful to be conscious of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness.
-- Mary Antin

#Two #World #Want
Such creatures of accident are we, liable to a thousand deaths before we are born. But once we are here, we may create our own world, if we choose.
-- Mary Antin

#World #May #Born
Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.
-- Mary Antin

#Spiritual #Mother #Pain
It is not that I belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me.
-- Mary Antin

#Past
Among the liveliest of my memories are those of eating and drinking; and I would sooner give up some of my delightful remembered walks, green trees, cool skies, and all, than to lose my images of suppers eaten on Sabbath evenings at the end of those walks.
-- Mary Antin

#Giving Up #Memories #Food
On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles.
-- Mary Antin

#Birthday #House #Police
The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school.
-- Mary Antin

#Morning #School #Pride
A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.
-- Mary Antin

#Running #Past #Long
There was one public school for boys, and one for girls, but Jewish children were admitted in limited numbers - only ten to a hundred; and even the lucky ones had their troubles.
-- Mary Antin

#Girl #Children #School
You heard on all sides that the brightest Jewish children were turned down if the examining officers did not like the turn of their noses.
-- Mary Antin

#Children #Noses #Sides
You went up to be examined with the other Jewish children, your heart heavy about that matter of your nose.
-- Mary Antin

#Children #Heart #Noses
It is painful to be consciously of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness. I am not afraid to live on and on, if only I do not have to remember too much. A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.
-- Mary Antin

#Running #Past #Two
A little instruction in the elements of chartographyâ€”a little practice in the use of the compass and the spirit level, a topographical map of the town common, an excursion with a road mapâ€”would have given me a fat round earth in place of my paper ghost.
-- Mary Antin

#Practice #Use #Elements
The czar always got his dues, no matter if it ruined a family.
-- Mary Antin

#Matter #Ruined
[I began to unload] the pyramid of honors, civic and literary, which had been heaped on me by the headlong process of rewarding a popular success. One day, I sat down and wrote a wholesale lot of letters of resignation. When I finished, I didn't belong to a single authors club or patriotic society. I was myself again, whatever that was.
-- Mary Antin

#Patriotic #Pyramids #Honor

You may also like:

Abraham Cahan
Editor
Amos Oz
Writer
Anna Howard Shaw
Physician
Anzia Yezierska
Novelist
Bernard Malamud
Author
Cynthia Ozick
Writer
David Antin
Poet
Edward Bok
Editor
Emma Lazarus
Poet
Eva Hoffman
Writer
Grace Paley
Writer
Henry Roth
Novelist
Horace Kallen
Philosopher
Israel Zangwill
Humorist
Louis Adamic
Author
Ludwig Lewisohn
Novelist
Nella Larsen
Novelist
Oscar Handlin
Historian
Randolph Bourne
Writer
Ron Chernow
Writer