Mary Antin Quotes

#1. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.

Mary Antin

#2. I have so little mastered the art of tranquil living that wherever I go I trail storm clouds of drama around me.

Mary Antin

#3. The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school.

Mary Antin

#4. If education, culture, the higher life were shining things to be worshiped from afar, he had still a means left whereby he could draw one step nearer to them.

Mary Antin

#5. On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles.

Mary Antin

#6. No, the czar did not want us in the schools.

Mary Antin

#7. Such creatures of accident are we, liable to a thousand deaths before we are born. But once we are here, we may create our own world, if we choose.

Mary Antin

#8. A little instruction in the elements of chartography - a little practice in the use of the compass and the spirit level, a topographical map of the town common, an excursion with a road map - would have given me a fat round earth in place of my paper ghost.

Mary Antin

#9. His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day.

Mary Antin

#10. There was one public school for boys, and one for girls, but Jewish children were admitted in limited numbers - only ten to a hundred; and even the lucky ones had their troubles.

Mary Antin

#11. The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them.

Mary Antin

#12. You went up to be examined with the other Jewish children, your heart heavy about that matter of your nose.

Mary Antin

#13. A characteristic thing about the aspiring immigrant is the fact that he is not content to progress alone. Solitary success is imperfect success in his eyes. He must take his family with him as he rises.

Mary Antin

#14. We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful.

Mary Antin

#15. The past was only my cradle, and now it cannot hold me, because I am grown too big.

Mary Antin

#16. There is never a Jewish community without its scholars, but where Jews may not be both intellectuals and Jews, they prefer to remain Jews.

Mary Antin

#17. I want now to be of today. It is painful to be conscious of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness.

Mary Antin

#18. Among the liveliest of my memories are those of eating and drinking; and I would sooner give up some of my delightful remembered walks, green trees, cool skies, and all, than to lose my images of suppers eaten on Sabbath evenings at the end of those walks.

Mary Antin

#19. A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession.

Mary Antin

#20. As we moved along in a little procession, I was delighted with the illumination of the streets. So many lamps, and they burned until morning, my father said, and so people did not need to carry lanterns.

Mary Antin

#21. In the evening of the first day my father conducted us to the public baths.

Mary Antin

#22. A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.

Mary Antin

#23. It is only that my illusion is more real to me than reality. And so do we often build our world on an error, and cry out that the universe is falling to pieces, if any one but lift a finger to replace the error by truth.

Mary Antin

#24. You heard on all sides that the brightest Jewish children were turned down if the examining officers did not like the turn of their noses.

Mary Antin

#25. The czar was always sending us commands - you shall not do this and you shall not do that - till there was very little left that we might do, except pay tribute and die.

Mary Antin

#26. It is not that I belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me.

Mary Antin

#27. What we get in steerage is not the refuse, but the sinew and bone of all the nations.

Mary Antin

#28. The czar always got his dues, no matter if it ruined a family.

Mary Antin

#29. One positive command he gave us: You shall love and honor your emperor. In every congregation a prayer must be said for the czar's health, or the chief of police would close the synagogue.

Mary Antin