Quotes on Descent

Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent.

As a feminist of Egyptian and Muslim descent, my life's work has been informed by the belief that religion and culture must never be used to justify the subjugation of women.

(on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.

But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.

I want to see women of African descent shine.

You are my angel and my damnation; in your presence I reach divine ecstasy and in your absence I descent to hell.

Africans and persons of African descent must assume the primary responsibility and leadership in historical research....if we are to continue to leave practically all important historical research and writing concerning the black race to the white man, then we must be prepared to accept, uncomplainingly, the white man's point of view.

It now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one...the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

The United Nations and the Organization of American States have named 2011 as the International Year for People of African Descent. This is an opportunity for all of us around the globe to celebrate the diversity of our societies and to honor the contributions that our fellow citizens of African descent make every day to the economic, social and political fabrics of our communities.

Compromise, while at times morally necessary or at least justifiable, is more often only the first permission for a person (or society) to begin a long downhill descent.

You've seen my descent, now watch my rising.

Between the desire And the spasm, Between the potency And the existence, Between the essence And the descent, Falls the Shadow.

And sure enough, in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. The heart that he has locked away slowly shrivels and grows hair, symbolising his own descent to beasthood.

The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.

I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.

Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique.

So far has Athens left the rest of mankind behind in thought and expression that her pupils have become the teachers of the world, and she has made the name of Hellas distinctive no longer of race but of intellect, and the title of Hellene a badge of education rather than of common descent.

Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal_x000D_ seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attention_x000D_ has diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is now_x000D_ greater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing - and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is like death_x000D_ through freezing - a pleasant one.

No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that someone will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent.

there is no ascent to the heights without prior descent into darkness, no new life without some form of death.