Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes have burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile but hers.
Interpretation
Liberty requires total commitment and reveals a deep connection to the heart and soul.
This quote by Clarence Darrow suggests that true liberty demands absolute devotion and cannot be understood superficially. It portrays liberty as a powerful force that captivates the individual entirely, indicating that anything less than total commitment will not suffice, and once one has embraced liberty, they can find no substitute for its allure.
In practice
During a speech about civil rights, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of fully embracing freedom.
With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men.
Do I need to argue to Your Honor that cruelty only breeds cruelty? That hatred only causes hatred; that if there is any way to soften this human heart which is hard enough at its best, if there is any way to kill evil and hatred and all that goes with it, it is not through evil and hatred and cruelty; it is through charity, and love, and understanding?
Chase after the truth like all hell.
No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.
The trouble with law is lawyers.
The time will come when all people will view with horror light way in which society and its courts of law now take human life; and when that time comes, the way will be clear to device some better method of dealing with poverty and ignorance and their frequent byproducts, which we call crime.
Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.
There is a dark side to the world that we're all familiar with - and you can choose to ignore it and create a sugar-coated, Disney version, or you can acknowledge both the beautiful and the dark.
Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope; and the one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable.
If you look throughout human history ... the central epiphany of every religious tradition always occurs in the wilderness.
Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.
O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the gods, know that if you become worse, you shall go to worse souls, or if better to the better... In every succession of life and death, you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is the justice of heaven.
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