How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real!
Interpretation
Life can be incredibly challenging for those in lower social positions, yet it remains profoundly human and authentic.
This quote by W. E. B. Du Bois speaks to the struggles faced by individuals who belong to lower socioeconomic classes. It recognizes the difficulty of their lived experiences while also highlighting the essence of humanity that persists despite these hardships. The term 'lowly' suggests a social hierarchy, and Du Bois emphasizes that even in difficult circumstances, the human spirit remains vibrant and genuine.
In practice
During a speech on social justice, one might reference this quote to highlight the experiences of marginalized communities.
Before the Civil War, the Negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen found economic opportunity wide and daily growing wider, the Negro found public opinion determined to 'keep him in his place.'
Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools - intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it - this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life.
School houses do not teach themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.
Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.
For most people, it is enough for the world to know that they aspire. The world does not ask what their aspirations are, trusting that those aspirations are for the best and greatest things. But with regard to the Negroes in America, there is a feeling that their aspirations in some way are not consistent with the great ideals.
For fifteen years, I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder.
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
Navigating a nonsober world of restaurants and bars, dinner parties, and benefits is like anything that requires practice. Like tennis or a foreign language, it gets easier the more you do it. But like all beginnings, it can be awkward. You stumble, you worry, and then there are unexpected moments of grace that give you the courage to keep going.
Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.
All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.
There are moments that you suffer a lot, moments you won't photograph. There are some people you like better than others. But you give, you receive, you cherish, you are there. When you are really there, you know when you see the picture later what you are seeing.
You pay for good days by then having bad days. You pay for joy with pain.
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