Olive Schreiner Quotes
Perhaps the old monks were right when they tried to root love out; perhaps the poets are right when they try to water it. It is a blood-red flower, with the color of sin; but there is always the scent of a god about it. 
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Monks | Root | Love | Poets | Water |
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A little weeping, a little wheedling, a little self-degradation, a little careful use of our advantages, and then some man will say ''.Come, be my wife!'' With good looks and youth marriage is easy to attain. There are men enough; but a woman who has sold herself, even for a ring and a new name, need hold her skirt aside for no creature in the street. They both earn their bread in one way. Marriage for love is the most beautiful external symbol of the union of souls; marriage without it is the least clean traffic that defiles the world.
- Olive Schreiner
We all enter the world little plastic beings, with so much natural force, perhaps, but for the rest / blank; and the world tells us what we are to be, and shapes us by the ends it sets before us. To you it says / Work; and to us it says / Seem! To you it says / As you approximate to man's highest ideal of God, as your arm is strong and your knowledge great, and the power to labor is with you, so you shall gain all that human heart desires. To us it says / Strength shall not help you, nor knowledge, nor labor. You shall gain what men gain, but by other means. And so the world makes men and women.
- Olive Schreiner