41 Quotes by Mary Antin

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

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

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

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

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.

It is painful to be consciously of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness. I am not afraid to live on and on, if only I do not have to remember too much. A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.

One current of continuity runs underneath all the abortive phases of my life. From childhood on I have been obliged to drop anything I was doing to run after any man who seemed to know a little more than I did about God . . . I most want to write about: how a modern woman has sought the face of God-not the name nor the fame but the face [ital] of God-and what adventures came to meet her on this ancient human path.

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

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