Term
| The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back. |
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Definition
| "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain |
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Term
| I hadn't had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens—there ain't nothing in the world so good when it's cooked right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. . . .We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. |
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Definition
| "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain |
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Term
| It was a close place. I took . . . up [the letter I'd written to Miss Watson], and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right then, I'll go to hell”—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. |
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Definition
| "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain |
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Term
| Tom told me what his plan was, and I see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. So I was satisfied, and said we would waltz in on it. |
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Definition
| "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain |
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Term
| But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before. |
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Definition
| "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain |
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Term
| I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a-laying up sin and suffering for us both, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. |
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Definition
| "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain |
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Term
“Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you like it?”
The brush continued to move.
“Like it? Well I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”
That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth—stepped back to note the effect—added a touch here and there—criticized the effect again—Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:
“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.” |
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Definition
| "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain |
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Term
| Mr. Walters fell to “showing off,” with all sorts of official bustlings and activities. . . . The librarian “showed off”—running hither and thither with his arms full of books. . . . The young lady teachers “showed off”. . . . The young gentlemen teachers “showed off”. . . . The little girls “showed off” in various ways, and the little boys “showed off” with such diligence that the air was thick with paper wads and the murmur of scufflings. And above it all the great man sat and beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all the house, and warmed himself in the sun of his own grandeur—for he was “showing off,” too. |
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Definition
| "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain |
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Term
| Tom was a glittering hero once more—the pet of the old, the envy of the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging. |
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Definition
| "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain |
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Term
| Huck Finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the Widow Douglas's protection introduced him into society—no, dragged him into it, hurled him into it—and his sufferings were almost more than he could bear. The widow's servants kept him clean and neat, combed and brushedâ. He had to eat with knife and fork; he had to use napkin, cup, and plate; he had to learn his book, he had to go to church; he had to talk so properly that speech was become insipid in his mouth; whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles of civilization shut him in and bound him hand and foot. |
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Definition
| "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain |
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Term
| Newman was silent awhile. "Well, I want a great woman. I stick to that. That's one thing I can treat myself to, and if it's to be had I mean to have it. What else have I toiled and struggled for all these years? I've succeeded, and now what am I to do with my success? To make it perfect, as I see it, there must be a lovely being perched on the pile like some shining statue crowning some high monument...I want, in a word, the best article in the market." |
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Definition
| "The American" by Henry James |
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Term
| But the moment, and the glance that lived in it, had been sufficient to relieve Newman of the first and last fit of sharp personal embarrassment he was ever to know. He performed the movement frequent with him and which was always a symbol of his taking mental possession of a scene—he extended his long legs. The impression his hostess had made on him at their first meeting came back in an instant; it had been deeper than he knew. She took on a light and a grace, or, more definitely, an interest; he had opened a book and the first lines held his attention. |
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Definition
| "The American" by Henry James |
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Term
Madame de Cintré rose quickly and grasped his arm. "Ah Valentin, what do you mean to do?"
"To show Mr Newman the house. It will be very amusing to show Mr Newman the house....It's full of curious things. Besides a visit like Mr Newman's is just what it wants and has never had. It's a rare chance all round."
"You're very wicked, brother," Madame de Cintré insisted. |
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Definition
| "The American" by Henry James |
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Term
| "There's something in your situation that rubs me up. You're the first man about whom I've ever found myself saying 'Oh, if I were he—!' ... It's a sort of air you have of being imperturbably, being irremovably and indestructibly (that's the thing) at home in the world. When I was a boy my father assured me it was by just such an air that people recognized a Bellegarde. He called my attention to it. He didn't advise me to cultivate it; he said that as we grew up it always came of itself. I supposed it had come to me because I think I've always had the feeling it represents. My place in life had been made for me and it seemed easy to occupy. But you who, as I understand it, have made your own place, you who, as you told us the other day, have made and sold articles of vulgar household use—you strike me, in a fashion of your own, as a man who stands about at his ease and looks straight over ever so many high walls. I seem to see you move everywhere like a big stockholder on his favourite railroad. And yet the world used to be supposed to be ours. What is it I miss?" |
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Definition
| "The American" by Henry James |
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Term
| He mused a great deal on Madame de Cintré—sometimes with a dull despair that might have seemed a near neighbor to detachment. He lived over again the happiest hours he had known - that silver chain of numbered days... He had yet held in his cheated arms, he felt, the full experience, and when he closed them together round the void that was all they now possessed, he might have been some solitary spare athlete practicing restlessly in the corridor of the circus. |
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Definition
| "The American" by Henry James |
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Term
| When you get old, you can't talk to people because people snap at you. That's why you become deaf, so you won't be able to hear people talking to you that way That's why old people die, eventually. People talk to them that way. |
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Definition
| "American Dream" by Edward Albee |
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Term
| I no longer have the capacity to feel anything. I have no emotions. I have been drained, torn asunder disemboweled. I have, now, only my person, my body, my face. I use what I have I let people love me I accept the syntax around me, for while I know I cannot relate;I know I must be related to. |
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Definition
| "American Dream" by Edward Albee |
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Term
| GRANDMA: Then it turned out it only had eyes for Daddy. MRS. BARKER: For its Daddy! Why, any self-respecting woman would have gouged those eyes right out of its head. GRANDMA: Well, she did. That's exactly what she did. |
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Definition
| "American Dream" by Edward Albee |
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Term
| What I'll really have to do is to see if it applies to anything. I mean, after all, I do do volunteer work if an adoption service, but it isn't very much like the Bye-Bye Adoption Service is the Bye-Bye Adoption Service and while I can remember Mommy and Daddy coming to see me, oh, about twenty years ago, about buying a bumble, I can't quite remember anyone very much like Mommy and Daddy coming to see me about buying a bundle. |
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Definition
| "American Dream" by Edward Albee |
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Term
| WHAT a masculine Daddy! Isn't he a masculine Daddy? |
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Definition
| "American Dream" by Edward Albee |
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Term
| "My mother and I often took a bath together. Sometimes it was just a plain bath, which did not take very long. Other times it was a special bath in which the barks and flowers of many different trees, together with all sorts of oils, were boiled in the same large cauldron." |
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Definition
| "Annie John" by Jamaica Kincaid |
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Term
| "I was sure I could never let those hands touch me again; I was sure I could never let her kiss me again. All that was finished." |
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Definition
| "Annie John" by Jamaica Kincaid |
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Term
| "Gwen and I were soon inseparable. If you saw one, you saw the other. For me, each day began as I waited for Gwen to come by and fetch me for school" |
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Definition
| "Annie John" by Jamaica Kincaid |
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Term
| "What just deserts, I thought, for I did not like Columbus. How I loved this picture—to see the usually triumphant Columbus, brought so low, seated by the bottom of the boat watching things go by." |
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Definition
| "Annie John" by Jamaica Kincaid |
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Term
| "I could hear the small waves lap lapping around the ship. They made an unexpected sound as if a vessel filled with liquid had been placed on its side and was now emptying out." |
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Definition
| "Annie John" by Jamaica Kincaid |
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Term
| It cannot be said, in this biography of a young man who was in no degree a hero, who regarded himself as a seeker after truth yet who stumbled and slid back all his life and bogged himself in every obvious morass, that Martin's intentions toward Madeleine Fox were what is called "honorable." |
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Definition
| "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis |
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Term
| Are you going on for the rest of your life, stumbling into respectability and having to be dug out again? Will you never learn you're a barbarian? |
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Definition
| "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis |
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Term
| I make many mistakes. But one thing I keep always pure: the religion of a scientist. |
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Definition
| "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis |
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Term
| Nonsense! That attitude is old-fashioned. This is no longer an age of parochialism but of competition, in art and science just as much as in commerce…. |
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Definition
| "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis |
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Term
| I feel as if I were really beginning to work now," said Martin. "This new quinine stuff may prove pretty good. We'll plug along on it for two or three years, and maybe we'll get something permanent - and probably we'll fail!" |
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Definition
| "Arrowsmith" by Sinclair Lewis |
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Term
| That's what they mean by the love that passeth understanding: that pride, that furious desire to hide that abject nakedness which we bring here with us, . . . carry stubbornly and furiously with us into the earth again. |
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Definition
| "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner |
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Term
“Jewel's mother is a horse,” Darl said.
“Then mine can be a fish, can't it, Darl?” I said.
. . .
“Then what is your ma, Darl?” I said.
“I haven't got ere one,” Darl said. “Because if I had one, it is was. And if it was, it cant be is. Can it?” |
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Definition
| "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner |
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Term
| [W]ords dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at. . . . [M]otherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. |
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Definition
| "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner |
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Term
| Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it. |
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Definition
| "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner |
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Term
| “It's Cash and Jewel and Vardaman and Dewey Dell,” pa says, kind of hangdog and proud too, with his teeth and all, even if he wouldn't look at us. “Meet Mrs Bundren,” he says. |
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Definition
| "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner |
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Term
| In one sense, we were huddled in there, bonded togethher in seeking security and warmth and comfort from each other, and we didn't know it. All of us—who might have probed space, or cured cancer, or built industries—were, instead, black victims of the white man's American social system. |
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Definition
| "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X |
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Term
| “Yes! Yes, that raping, red-headed devil was my grandfather! That close, yes! My mother's father! She didn't like to speak of it, can you blame her? She said she never laid eyes on him! She was glad for that! I'm glad for her! If I could drain away his blood that pollutes my body, and pollutes my complexion, I'd do it! Because I hate every drop of the rapist's blood that's in me!” |
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Definition
| "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X |
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Term
| America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. |
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Definition
| "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X |
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Term
| I reflected many, many times to myself upon how the American Negro has been entirely brainwashed from ever seeing or thinking of himself, as he should, as a part of the nonwhite peoples of the world. |
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Definition
| "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X |
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Term
| I've had enough of someone else's propaganda.âI'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole. |
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Definition
| "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X |
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Term
| In closing I wish to thank all the wonderful people who were at Miss Jane's house through those long months of interviewing her, because this is not only Miss Jane's autobiography, it is theirs as well. |
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Definition
| "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" by Ernest Gaines |
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Term
| That's man's way. To prove something. Day in, day out he must prove he is a man. Poor Fool. |
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Definition
| "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" by Ernest Gaines |
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Term
| I might be a Secesh. Then I might be a friend of your race. Or maybe just an old man who is nothing. Or maybe an old man who is very wise. Or an old man who might kill himself tomorrow. Maybe an old man who must go on living, just to give two children a pan of meatless greens and cornbread. |
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Definition
| "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" by Ernest Gaines |
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Term
| We caused one death already this evening. Jimmy was right. We all killed him. We tried to make him follow a set of rules our people gived us long ago. |
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Definition
| "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" by Ernest Gaines |
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Term
| Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he's the One. |
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Definition
| "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" by Ernest Gaines |
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Term
In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight—perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman.
But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace. |
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Definition
| "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin |
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Term
| She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted. She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if she had submitted to his command. Of course she had; she remembered that she had. But she could not realize why or how she should have yielded, feeling as she then did. |
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Definition
| "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin |
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Term
| “How many years have I slept?” she inquired. “The whole island seems changed. A new race of beings must have sprung up, leaving only you and me as past relics. How many ages ago did Madame Antoine and Tonie die? And when did our people from Grand Isle disappear from the earth?” |
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Definition
| "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin |
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Term
| The pigeon-house pleased her. It at once assumed the intimate character of a home, while she herself invested it with a charm which it reflected like a warm glow. There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to “feed upon opinion” when her own soul had invited her. |
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Definition
| "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin |
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Term
| “The years that are gone seem like dreams—if one might go on sleeping and dreaming—but to wake up and find—oh! well! Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.” |
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Definition
| "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin |
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