“They themselves mocked Africa, trading stories of absurdity, of stupidity, and they felt safe to mock, because it was a mockery born of longing, and of the heartbroken desire to see a place made whole again.”

"The Last Journey", from The Testament of dick peter (London: Grant Richards, 1908) p. 146

2000s, 2001, First inaugural address (January 2001)
Context: We have a place, all of us, in a long story. A story we continue, but whose end we will not see. It is the story of a new world that became a friend and liberator of the old, a story of a slave-holding society that became a servant of freedom, the story of a power that went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer. It is the American story, a story of flawed and fallible people, united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals. The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding American promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born. Americans are called to enact this promise in our lives and in our laws. And though our nation has sometimes halted, and sometimes delayed, we must follow no other course.

Source: The Goose Girl

Source: Short fiction, Fire Watch (1985), The Sidon in the Mirror (p. 161)

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 20

Source: The Storm Lord (1976), Chapter 11 (p. 160)