A Quote by Mary Antin

It is painful to be consciously of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness. I am not afraid to live on and on, if only I do not have to remember too much. A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.
A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.
I want now to be of today. It is painful to be conscious of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness.
This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.
In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me.
Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'.
Basically, you can live your life in one of two ways. You can let your brain run you the way it has in the past. You can let it flash any picture or sound or feeling, and you can respond automatically on cue, like a Pavlovian dog resp?onding to a bell. Or you can choose to consciously run your brain yourself. You can implant the cues you want. You can take bad experiences and sap them of their strength and power. You can represent them to yourself in a way that no longer overpowers you, a way that "cuts them down" to a size where you know you can effectively handle things.
A man stays alive as long as he is remembered. He is killed only by forgetfulness.
It seems to me that the chief thing about a woman - who is much of a woman - is that in the long run she is not to be had... She is not to be caught by any of the catch-words, love, beauty, honor, duty, worth, work, salvation - none of them - not in the long run. In the long run she only says Am I satisfied, or is there some beastly dissatisfaction gnawing and gnawing inside me. And if there is some dissatisfaction, it is physical, at least as much as psychic, sex as much as soul.
I dreamed... in the black of night a man asks all the questions he dare not ask by daylight. For me, the past years, only one question has remained. Why would the gods take my eyes and my strength, yet condemn me to linger on so long, frozen and forgotten? What use could they have for an old done man like me? ... I remember, Sam. I still remember. Remember what? Dragons, Aemon whispered.
Sometimes she has imagined what it would be like to fly, to live in the river, to run like a horse. She has dreamed of that freedom, that power, and fears the wildness in herself that wants to live as beasts live, moved purely by need and desire. She has felt torn between the heat of her limbs and the thoughts in her mind telling her to be careful and good and always calm. Don't scream or cry, don't run to him and throw yourself at his feet, pleading for him to take you in his arms, don't strip off your clothes and run naked to the water, wild with wanting.
And Jesus was a Jew too. Your god. He was a Jew like me. And so was his father.
Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?
I am wandering inside, wandering through my past, trying to see if there is a place there strong enough to hold me.
Being a parent has become incredibly important to me. I never knew how much I would be altered by my children. I would like to be remembered by them in much the way I remember my mom: as loving and kind.
I'm so afraid to love you, but more afraid to loose. Clinging to a past that doesn't let me choose. Once there was a darkness, deep and endless night. You gave me everything you had, oh you gave me light. And I will remember you. Will you remember me? Don't let your life pass you by. Weep not for the memories.
I'm one of the millions of immigrant children, children of loneliness, wandering between worlds that are at once too old and too new to live in.
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