Olive Schreiner Books

“Ones real deathless wealth is all the beautiful souls one has seen and spiritually touched.”

Source: Olive Schreiner Letters: 1871-1899

Real Soul Beautiful Wealth Touched Deathless Beautiful Soul

“I think if I were dying and I heard of an act of injustice, it would start me up to a moment's life again.”

Source: The letters of Olive Schreiner, 1876-1920

People Ifs Thinking Moments Helping Heard Dying Injustice Helping Others Helping Other People

“I know there will be spring, as surely as the birds know it when they see above the snow two tiny, quivering green leaves. Spring cannot fail us.”

Source: The letters of Olive Schreiner, 1876-1920

Knows Two Failing Spring Bird Green Tiny Snow Green Leaves

Book:Dreams

Source: Dreams

“For those of us who have a ground of knowledge which we cannot transmit to outsiders, it is perhaps more profitable to act fearlessly than to argue.”

Action Experience Arguing Outsiders Profitable Transmit

Book:Woman and Labor

Source: Woman and Labor

“genius has no limit of sex or race.”

Sex Race Genius Limits

“One has no right to form ideals of people, and then, because they don't justify them, become bitter.”

Source: The letters of Olive Schreiner, 1876-1920

People Form Ideals Bitter Justify

“The nations which have received and in any way dealt fairly and mercifully with the Jew have prospered, and the nations that have tortured and oppressed him have written out their own curse.”

Source: The letters of Olive Schreiner, 1876-1920

Way Nations Written Jew Curse Oppressed

Book:Words in Season: The Public Writings with Her Own Remembrances Collected for the First Time

Source: Words in Season: The Public Writings with Her Own Remembrances Collected for the First Time

“I am always thirsting for beautiful, beautiful, beautiful music. I wish I could make it. Perhaps there isn't any music on earth like what I picture to myself.”

Earth Beautiful Wish Music Beautiful Music

“It is the swimmer who first leaps into the frozen stream who is cut sharpest by the ice; those who follow him find it broken, and the last find it gone. It is the men or women who first tread down the path which the bulk of humanity will ultimately follow, who must find themselves at last in solitudes where the silence is deadly.”

Source: The letters of Olive Schreiner, 1876-1920

Men Firsts Lasts Humanity Silence Gone Path Cutting He Man Broken Solitude Ice Streams Leap Silence Is Frozen Social Change Pioneers Swimmer

Book:Woman and Labor

Source: Woman and Labor

“God said, 'When one man and one woman shine together, it makes the most perfect light.”

Men Said Light Together Perfect Shining One Man One Woman

Book:Dreams

Source: Dreams

“the brain works better if the hand works too.”

Ifs Thinking Hands Brain

Book:My Other Self

Source: My Other Self

“Men's bodies are our women's works of art. Given to us power of control, we will never carelessly throw them in to fill up the gaps in human relationships made by international ambitions and greeds ... War will pass when intellectual culture and activity have made possible to the female an equal share in the governance of modern national life; it will probably not pass away much sooner; its extinction will not be delayed much longer.”

“We have always borne part of the weight of war, and the major part ... Men have made boomerangs, bows, swords, or guns with which to destroy one another; we have made the men who destroyed and were destroyed! ... We pay the first cost on all human life.”

Men Firsts Humans Made War Pay He Man Cost Majors Gun Weight Destroyed Human Life Bows Boomerang

Author:Olive Schreiner

“No woman who is a woman says of a human body, 'it is nothing' ... On this one point, and on this point alone, the knowledge of woman, simply as woman, is superior to that of man; she knows the history of human flesh; she knows its cost; he does not.”

Knows Men Humans Doe Body Cost Flesh Superiors Human Body

Author:Olive Schreiner

“A word may become so defiled by bad use that it will take a century before it can be purifed, and brought into use again.”

May Use Century

“There is no door at which the hand of woman has knocked for admission into a new field of toil but there have been found on the other side the hands of strong and generous men eager to turn it for her, almost before she knocks.”

Source: The letters of Olive Schreiner, 1876-1920

Men Has Beens Hands Turns Found Strong Sides Doors Fields Generous Toil Admission Generous Man

Book:Woman and Labor

Source: Woman and Labor

“We are a race of women that of old knew no fear and feared no death, and lived great lives and hoped great hopes; and if today some of us have fallen on evil and degenerate times, there moves in us yet the throb of the old blood.”

Ifs Today Moving Evil Race Blood Fallen No Fear Degenerates Great Hope

Book:Woman and Labour

Source: Woman and Labour

“Love, smoke and a cough cannot long be hid!”

Long Smoke

“Love that has been given to you is too sacred a thing to be talked of to anyone ... except just to the person who is like part of you and who will feel it as you do.”

Source: The letters of Olive Schreiner, 1876-1920

Feels Persons Has Beens Given Sacred

“Marriage has been a very rich and beautiful development of my life. Month by month as we live together we seem to come nearer to each other; and to feel a more complete fellowship. I do not feel that it in any way fetters or narrows my world: - it seems rather to enlarge it.”

Source: Olive Schreiner Letters: 1871-1899

World Way Feels Has Beens Seems Together Beautiful Rich Months Development Fellowship Fetters

“We all enter the world little plastic beings, with so much natural force, perhaps, but for the rest--blank; and the world tells uswhat we are to be, and shapes us by the ends it sets before us. To you it says--Work; and to us it says--Seem! To you it says--As you approximate to man's highest ideal of God, as your arm is strong and your knowledge great, and the power to labour is with you, so you shall gain all that human heart desires. To us it says--Strength shall not help you, nor knowledge, nor labour. You shall gain what men gain, but by other means. And so the world makes men and women.”

Source: Olive Schreiner Letters: 1871-1899

Source: The Story of an African Farm: A Novel

“[Finishing schools] are nicely adapted machines for experimenting on the question, "Into how little space a human being can be crushed?" I have seen some souls so compressed that they would have fitted into a small thimble, and found room to move . . .”

Humans Littles Soul School Moving Found Human Beings Space Rooms Machines Crushed Finishing Adapted Finishing School

Author:Olive Schreiner

“To us, from the beginning, Nature has been but a poor plastic thing, to be toyed with this way or that, as man happens to please his deity or not; to go to church or not; to say his prayers right or not; to travel on a Sunday or not.Was it possible for us in an instant to see Nature as she is-the flowing vestment of an unchanging reality?”

Men Way Has Beens Reality Happens Church Prayer Loss Poor Please Disaster Instant Sunday Plastic Deities Unchanging

“The secret of success is concentration ... Taste everything a little, look at everything a little; but live for one thing.”

Source: The Story of an African Farm

Looks Littles Secret One Thing Taste Concentration Secret To Success

“There's something so beautiful in coming on one's very inmost thoughts in another. In one way it is one of the greatest pleasures one has.”

Source: The Story of an African Farm

Way Beautiful Pleasure One Way Greatest Pleasures

“A child sees everything, looks straight at it, examines it, without any preconceived idea.”

Source: The letters of Olive Schreiner, 1876-1920

Looks Children Ideas Preconceived Ideas

“Our fathers had their dreams; we have ours; the generation that follows will have its own. Without dreams and phantoms man cannot exist.”

Source: Olive Schreiner Letters: 1871-1899

Men Dream Father Generations Our Father Glowing Phantoms Fathers Day

“It is finer to bring one noble human being into the world and rear it well... than to kill ten thousand.”

Source: The Story of an African Farm

World Humans Wells War Peace Human Beings Thousand Ten Noble Anti War Antiwar

Author:Olive Schreiner

“We were equals once when we lay new-born babes on our nurse's knees. We will be equal again when they tie up our jaws for the last sleep.”

Lasts Born Sleep Equal Lays Equality Knees Ties Nurse Babe

Author:Olive Schreiner

“Power! Did you ever hear of men being asked whether other souls should have power or not? It is born in them. You may dam up the fountain of water, and make it a stagnant marsh, or you may let it run free and do its work; but you cannot say whether it shall be there; it is there. And it will act, if not openly for good, then covertly for evil; but it will act.”

Ifs Men Should May Soul Running Evil Water Born Power Atheism Should Have Positive Atheism Fountain Stagnant Dams Marshes

“My feeling is that there is nothing in life but refraining from hurting others, and comforting those who are sad.”

Source: The Story of an African Farm

Feelings Hurt Kindness Sadness Sad Comforting Saddest Feeling Sad Sad Life Sadness Of Life Hurting Others Sadness And Love Sad Relationship

“No good work is ever done while the heart is hot and anxious and fretted.”

Source: Olive Schreiner Letters: 1871-1899

Inspirational Heart Done Fear Worry Hot Anxious Good Work

“There was never a great man who had not a great mother.”

Source: The letters of Olive Schreiner, 1876-1920

Men Reality Mother Women Mom Great Men Being A Mom Great Mother Mother Proverbs

Author:Olive Schreiner

“Slavery may, perhaps, be best compared to the infantile disease of measles; a complaint which so commonly attacks the young of humanity in their infancy, and when gone through at that period leaves behind it so few fatal marks; but which when it normally attacks the fully developed adult becomes one of the most virulent and toxic of diseases, often permanently poisoning the constitution where it does not end in death.”

May Doe Ends Young Humanity Behinds Gone Periods Disease Adults Constitution Mark Slavery Toxic Complaints Infancy Poisoning Infantile Measles

Author:Olive Schreiner

“Everything has two sides - the outside that is ridiculous, and the inside that is solemn.”

Two Reality Sides Ridiculous Solemn Two Sides Solemnity

“Marriage for love is the most beautiful external symbol of the union of souls; marriage without it is the least clean traffic that defiles the world.”

Source: The Story of an African Farm

World Soul Beautiful Love Is Unions Clean Symbols Traffic

Author:Olive Schreiner

“Men are like the earth and we are the moon; we turn always one side to them, and they think there is no other, because they don't see it - but there is.”

Thinking Men Earth Turns Sides Moon

Author:Olive Schreiner

“The surest sign of fitness is success.”

“Now we have no God. We have had two: the old God that our fathers handed down to us, that we hated, and never liked; the new one that we made for ourselves, that we loved; but now he has flitted away from us, and we see what he was made of - the shadow of our highest ideal, crowned and throned. Now we have no God.”

Source: The Story of an African Farm

Love Made Two Father Atheism Highest Shadow Ideals God Love Hated Our Father

Book:A track to the water's edge: the Olive Schreiner reader

Source: A track to the water's edge: the Olive Schreiner reader

“Perhaps the old monks were right when they tried to root love out; perhaps the poets are right when they try to water it. It is a blood-red flower, with the color of sin; but there is always the scent of a god about it.”

Love Trying Water Sin Blood Color Poet Flower Red Roots Scent Monk

“When the curtain falls no one is ready”

Source: The Story of an African Farm

Fall Ready Curtains

“No woman has the right to marry a man if she has to bend herself out of shape for him. She might wish to, but she could never be to him with all her passionate endeavor what the other woman could be to him without trying. Character will dominate over all and will come out at last.”

Source: The Story of an African Farm

Ifs Men Trying Character Might Lasts Wish Shapes Passionate Endeavor

Book:Dreams

Source: Dreams

“We have been so blinded by thinking and feeling that we have never seen the World.”

Thinking World Has Beens Feelings Blinded

“Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can't bring down.”

Source: The Story of an African Farm

Wall Kicks Iron

“There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, 'Now deal us your hardest blow, give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as we suffered when we were children.' The barb in the arrow of childhood's suffering is this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.”

Source: The Story of an African Farm

Giving Years Children Suffering Deals Fate Childhood Loneliness Ignorance Blow Intense Hardest Arrows Barbs

“If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?”

Source: The Story of an African Farm

Ifs Doe Doors Bird Sugar Cages