If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.
You’re only a child once.
"Thou shall not be dirty" and "Thou shall not be impudent" were the two commandments of Grandmother Henderson upon which hung our total salvation.
But Momma convinced us that not only was cleanliness next to Godliness, dirtiness was the inventor of mis-ery.
The impudent child was detested by God and a shame to its parents and could bring destruction to its house and line.
They took liberties in my Store that I would never dare. Since Momma told us that the less you say to whitefolks (or even powhitetrash) the better, Bailey and I would stand, solemn, quiet, in the displaced air. But if one of the playful apparitions got close to us, I pinched it. Partly out of angry frustration and partly because I didn't believe in its flesh reality.
When a person is beating you you should scream as loud as possible; maybe the whipper will become embarrassed or else some sympathetic soul might come to your rescue.
I rather you have a good mind than a cute behind.
People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.
All the Negroes had to do generally, and those at the revival especially, was bear up under this life of toil and cares, because a blessed home awaited them in the far-off bye and bye.
They basked in the righteousness of the poor and the exclusiveness of the downtrod-den. Let the whitefolks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses and schools and lawns like carpets, and books, and mostly-mostly-let them have their whiteness. It was better to be meek and lowly, spat upon and abused for this little time than to spend eternity frying in the fires of hell. No one would have admitted that the Christian and charitable people were happy to think of their oppressors' turning forever on the Devil's spit over the flames of fire and brimstone.
"They don't really hate us. They don't know us. How can they hate us? They mostly scared."
"That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got. I've told you many times, 'Can't do is like Don't Care! Neither of them have a home."
The perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy.
"Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait."
"God helps those who help themselves."
Don’t trust a taxi driver with your baby.
She used to say that her secret to life was that she "hoped for the best, was prepared for the worst, so anything in between didn't come as a surprise."
In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric. He must believe that for his ends to be served all things and people can justifiably be shifted about, or that he is the center not only of his own world but of the worlds which others inhabit.
Mother whispered, "See, you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without think-ing."
Shared from Twos ✌️
Use code “baller”