The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.
To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be madeby the reception of beautiful sentiments.
In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.
Proved right should be capable of being vindicated by right means as against the rude i.e. sanguinary means. Man may and should shed his own blood for establishing what he considers to be his right. He may not shed the blood of his opponent who disputes his 'right'.
'But the man who is ready to taste every form of knowledge, is glad to learn and never satisfied - he's the man who deserves to be called a philosopher, isn't he?'
The bird has an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his abdicated laws and traditions; but the birds live according to the natural law of God who causes the earth to turn around the sun.
What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows--it must grow smaller or larger, better or worse--it cannot stand still. In other words, we change--and must change, constantly, and keep on changing as long as we live. What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he's stuck in a rut.
All preachers of morality, as also all theologians have a bad habit in common: all of them try to persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical cure is necessary.
Feminine traits are called weaknesses. People joke about them; fools ridicule them; but reasonable persons see very well that those traits are just the tools for the management of men, and for the use of men for female designs.
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just that shall man be for the superman: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.
God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation.