Is it not a grotesque civilization which sends missionaries across the sea to save the souls of the heathen, and yet permits conditions at home that debauch the children at our very doors?
Interpretation
This quote critiques the hypocrisy of a society that is eager to assist others abroad while neglecting its own issues.
Edwin Markham's quote highlights the absurdity of a civilization that prioritizes sending missionaries to 'save' distant populations while turning a blind eye to the moral and social decay occurring within its own borders, particularly as it affects vulnerable children. It urges reflection on the values of society and questions the sincerity of its philanthropic efforts when local problems remain unaddressed.
In practice
In a speech about community service, one might introduce this quote to discuss the importance of addressing local social issues.
Greed and Gain, grim guardians of the great god Mammon, continually cry in the ears of the poor, 'Give us your little ones!' And forever do the poor push out their little ones at the imperious ukase, feeding the children to a blind Hunger that is never filled.
Sorrows come to stretch out places in the heart for joy.
There is a destiny which makes us brothers; none goes his way alone. All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.
The crest and crowning of all good, life's final star, is Brotherhood.
He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic , rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him In ! From the poem " Outwitted
The sequoias belong to the silences of the milleniums. Many of them have seen a hundred human generations rise, give off their little clamors and perish. They seem indeed to be forms of immortality standing here amoing the transitory shapes of time.
It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
Every returning New Yorker asks the question: Is this still my city? I have a ready answer, cloaked in obstinate despair: It is. And if it's not, I will love it all the more. I will love it to the point where it becomes mine again.
What are gold and jewels and precious utensils? Mere dross and dirt. The human face and the human heart, reciprocations of kindness and love, and all the nameless sympathies of our nature - these are the only objects worth being attached to.
Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.
. . . by natural selection our mind has adapted itself to the conditions of the external world. It has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the species or, in other words, the most convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. I renounce war, and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.