“Their cause I plead,—plead it in heart and mind;
A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.”
Prologue on Quitting the Stage in 1776. Compare: "I would help others, out of a fellow-feeling", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.
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David Garrick11
English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer 1717–1779Related quotes
“One that will not plead that cause wherein his tongue must be confuted by his conscience.”
Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian
The Good Advocate.
The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)
“Plead, Sleep, my cause, and make her soft like thee,
That she in peace may wake and pity me.”
Thomas Campion (1567–1620) English composer, poet and physician
Sleep, Angry Beauty
“When a man's cause is good, it will sufficiently plead for itself, yea, and for its master too.”
John Bunyan (1628–1688) English Christian writer and preacher
The Work of Jesus Christ as and Advocate
Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist
Letter to her mother (14 March 1847)
Context: If, while I hear the shriek of the slave mother robbed of her little ones, I do not open my mouth for the dumb, am I not guilty? Or should I go from house to house to do it, when I could tell so many more in less time, if they should be gathered in one place? You would not object or think it wrong, for a man to plead the cause of the suffering and the outcast; and surely the moral character of the act is not changed because it is done by a woman. I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex. I only ask that you will not withhold your consent from my doing anything that I think is my duty to do.
Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Democritus Junior to the Reader
Sherry Argov (1977) American writer
Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl-A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship
Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist
Olive Gilbert & Sojourner Truth (1878), Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Bondswoman of Olden Time, page 303.