“I have lived lies. I have done it again and again. I live lies because I cannot endure the weakness of anger, and I cannot admit the irrationality of love.-Marius”

Source: The Crucible (1953)
Context: Danforth: Do you mean to deny this confession when you are free?
Proctor: I mean to deny nothing!
Danforth: Then explain to me, Mr. Proctor, why you will not let —
Proctor: [With the cry of his whole soul] Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

Excerpt from the foreword in Girl Boss: Running the Show Like the Big Chicks, by Stacy Kravetz (1999)
1990s
Context: Another miraculous result of playing Scully has been all the incredible young women I have been blessed to meet along the way--women who have shared that they have received strength from Scully, that because of Scully's strength they have been afraid but done it anyway. These have been women from all walks of life: women from low-income neighborhoods who have persevered despite all odds to study hard and pursue their dreams, enabling them to enter into better schools and work environments; women who have illness and physical challenges who have gotten better and stronger because they believe they can. I truly believe that we can overcome any hurdle that lies before us and create the life we want to live. I have seen it happen time and time again.

"Many Rivers To Cross" (1981); later published in Some of Us Did Not Die : New and Selected Essays of June Jordan (2002)
Context: I wanted to be strong. I never wanted to be weak again as long as I lived. I thought about my mother and her suicide and I thought about how my father could not tell whether she was dead or alive.
I wanted to get well and what I wanted to do as soon as I was strong, actually, what I wanted to do was I wanted to live my life so that people would know unmistakably that I am alive, so that when I finally die people will know the difference for sure between my living and my death.
And I thought about the idea of my mother as a good woman and I rejected that, because I don't see why it's a good thing when you give up, or when you cooperate with those who hate you or when you polish and iron and mend and endlessly mollify for the sake of the people who love the way that you kill yourself day by day silently.
And I think all of this is really about women and work. Certainly this is all about me as a woman and my life work. I mean I am not sure my mother’s suicide was something extraordinary. Perhaps most women must deal with a similar inheritance, the legacy of a woman whose death you cannot possibly pinpoint because she died so many, many times and because, even before she became my mother, the life of that woman was taken; I say it was taken away.

Quote from Berthe's Morisot's letter, 1887 - after the death of her husband Eugène Manet
1881 - 1895

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Armistice sermon The Unknown Soldier (preached Sunday 12 November 1933, immediately following Armistice Day), published in The Secret of Victorious Living (1934); also in I Renounce War : The Story of the Peace Pledge Union (1962) by Sybil Morrison. The sermon inspired Canon Dick Sheppard to write a letter to the press in 1934, leading to the founding of the Peace Pledge Union.

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

"Returning to the Fields"
Arthur Waley, Translations from the Chinese (1941), p. 90
Variant translation:
Young I was witless in the world's affairs,
My nature wildness and hills prefers;
By mishap fallen into mundane snares,
Once I had left I wasted thirty years.
Birds in the cage long for their wonted woods,
Fish in the pool for former rivers yearn.
I clear the wildness that stretches south,
Hiding my defects homeward I return.
Ten acres built with scattered house square,
Beside the thatched huts eight or nine in all;
The elms and willows shade the hindmost eaves,
While peach and pear-trees spread before the hall.
While smoke form nearby huts hangs in the breeze;
A dog is barking in the alley deep;
A cock crows from the chump of mulberry trees.
Within my courtyard all is clear of dust,
Where tranquil in my leisure I remain.
Long have I been imprisoned in the cage;
Now back to Nature I return again.
"Returning to my Farm Young" (translation by Andrew Boyd)
Context: When I was young, I was out of tune with the herd,
[[File:Chen Hongshou Portrait von Tao-Qian. JPG|thumb|Long I lived checked by the bars of a cage;
Now I have turned again to Nature and Freedom. ]] My only love was for the hills and mountains.
Unwitting I fell into the Web of World's dust,
And was not free until my thirtieth year.
The migrant bird longs for the old wood;
The fish in the tank thinks of its native pool.
I had rescued from wildness a patch of the Southern Moor
And, still rustic, I returned to field and garden.
My ground covers no more than ten acres;
My thatched cottage has eight or nine rooms.
Elms and willows cluster by the eaves;
Peach trees and plum trees grow before the Hall.
Hazy, hazy the distant hamlets of men;
Steady the smoke that hangs over cottage roofs.
A dog barks somewhere in the deep lanes,
A cock crows at the top of the mulberry tree.
At gate and courtyard—no murmur of the World's dust;
In the empty rooms—leisure and deep stillness.
Long I lived checked by the bars of a cage;
Now I have turned again to Nature and Freedom.