Various

“ Soon this fire would become the conflagration destined to enkindle the earth with the ardent sentiment of kinship, uniting all its peoples; destined to consume and reduce to ashes the rage, hate and cruelty by which we are mutilated; the conflagration which will embrace all hearts, melt them into one,—the heart of the world, the heart of beings noble and just;—into one united family of workers.
In the streets of the dead city, created by slaves, in the streets of the city where cruelty reigned, faith in humanity and in victory over self and over the evil of the world grew and ripened. ”

“ Slowly he sank back in his chair, the arms hanging limp at his sides, and his chin falling on his chest, an attitude a painter might adopt gazing at a masterpiece he had just accomplished—in this case old Melville's painting hours were over for evermore, his eyes could no longer see the colors of this world. Like a soldier he had died at his post of duty, and serene happiness over this final victory lay on his features. In every life some [61] ideal happiness is hidden, which may be found, and for which we should prospect all our days. ”

“ Nothing was left undone to crush the body and spirit of this man; but sorrow and suffering make for sacred force, and those who have never felt it will fail to realize how it is that Alexander Berkman will return to those who loved and esteemed him, to those whom he loved so well, and still loves so well,—the oppressed and down-trodden millions—with the same intense, sweet spirit and with a clearer and grander vision of a world of human justice and equality. ”

“ My only fear, if there be room for fear, is that the new liberty and leisure will come too soon for the sordid people to make a wise use of it. Yet such a fear is like that of a man who should fear that his jaw would grind so hard as to destroy his teeth.
The world is moved by one Spirit, which everlastingly adjusts action against reaction, so that all is and always must be well. ”

“ The houses and the temples, enveloped in shadow, melted into an inanimate chaos of iron and stone; a menacing silence filled the streets with a clamminess as of death; life ceased, for the force which created it had become conscious of itself; and enslaved humanity had found the magic and invincible word to express its will; it had enfranchised itself from the yoke; with its own eyes it had seen its might,—the might of the creator. ”

“ If Socialism or Anarchism is needed to insure voluntary communism of goods, then it is for Socialism or Anarchism that we should work; and for me, if I could see, I would turn from single tax to either of them as readily as I would turn down hill if I found that up hill was the wrong road.
At present, hardly any one favors these views—of course, not plutocrats, because the doctrine is dangerous; not Socialists, because they think that its words turn Socialists into land reformers; nor Anarchists, because they regard compulsory payment of a fair price for the land one uses as a form of tax ”

“ And the dull and somber city, the stone buildings atrociously lined one against the other, shutting in the temples, were for men a prison, rebuffing the rays of the sun. And the music of life was smothered by the cry of suffering and rage, by the whisper of dissimulated hate, by the threatening bark of cruelty, by the voluptuous cry of violence. ”

“ We cannot change the natures of men, but we can insist upon their hiding their baser conduct and the degraded portions of their lives from our view."
"But," said I, "Gorky evidently considers this woman his wife, and had no idea that anybody would think otherwise."
"The point is," said Sarah Warner, in exasperation, "and I think I voice the sentiments of this organization, that he was not legally divorced from his first wife and that, therefore, he cannot be legally married to this woman. A law is a law, no matter who makes it. The law is sacred and must not be tampered with." ”

“ In looking over the events of 1892 and the causes that led up to the act of Alexander Berkman, one beholds Mammon seated upon a throne built of human bodies, without a trace of sympathy on its Gorgon brow for the creatures it controls. These victims, bent and worn, with the reflex of the glow of the steel and iron furnaces in their haggard faces, carry their sacrificial offerings to the ever-insatiable monster, capitalism. ”

“ Thinking of it now, still with some sense of puzzlement, I believe his love for human creatures, and especially within the family relation, were of that deep, still, yearning kind we feel towards the woods and hills of home; the silent, unobtrusive presence fills us with rest and certainty, and we are all unease when we miss it; yet we take it for granted, and seldom dwell upon it in our active thoughts, or realize the part it plays in us; it belongs to the dark wells of being. ”

“ But the factory system pervades the school and art school as well as the factory.
What if the underlying force of education were spontaneous expression, instead of the limited method or system? The cry of the teacher is always, "It is very well to be spontaneous, but we must deal with the child en masse." The remedy for that is simple, because there is no real necessity to deal with children en masse. It is so much easier to apply the same system to each varied unit of a mass than to discover and help the individual expression of each. ”

“ The value of applied esthetics is as a medicine to stir up social unrest and discontent. Its keynote is self-expression, and it is when men and women begin to think and act for themselves that they most keenly feel social and economic restrictions, and are made to suffer under them. But if suffering is necessary to growth, let us have it and have it over with by all means. No sane being will stand much of it without making an effort to get at its cause. ”

“ EVERY occupant of the ramshackle, old-fashioned studio building on Broadway knew old Melville, the landscape painter, who had roughed life within its dilapidated walls for more than a score of years. In former years the studio building had been quite fashionable and respectable; there is hardly a painter of reputation in New York to-day who has not, once in his life, occupied a room on the top floor. ”

“ And the fate of old Melville's pictures? Who knows if they may not some day, when their colors have mellowed, be discovered in some garret, and re-enter the art world in a more dignified manner? True enough, they will not set the world on fire, yet they may be at least appreciated as the sincere efforts of a man who loved his art above all else, and, despite deficiencies, had a keen understanding for nature and considerable ability to express it. Whatever their future may be, his work has not been in vain. ”

“ The strong were the rich: everyone believed that money alone gives power and liberty. All wanted power because all were slaves. The luxury of the rich begot the envy and hate of the poor; no one knew any finer music than the ring of gold ”

“ Glory and aggrandizement based upon injustice brings its own reward, and when a people subjugate and exploit another, they must inevitably pay the price of their own brutality and injustice. The handwriting is on the wall in the shape of the present census report. Decaying at the centre, the British Empire is rapidly going the way of the Persian, Greek and Roman Empires, and her name will be synonymous with injustice as theirs are. Nations no more than individuals can thrive, expand and develop their best faculties unless their lives are based upon freedom and justice. ”

“ These days were days of anguish to the rulers, to those who considered themselves the masters of life; each night was as long as thousands of nights, so thick was the gloom, so timidly shone the few fires scattered through the city. And then the monster city, created by the centuries, gorged with human blood, showed itself in all its shameful weakness ”

“ He added that the poverty of the masses had at times tortured him to such an extent that he was unable to partake of his meals, which were meager enough, especially during his student life in Zurich; yet he had felt ashamed of partaking of such a luxury as a cup of coffee even. I had to admit that I could not share his hopes of the influence of an artistic portrayal of the sufferings of the weavers upon the people of wealth. Self-satisfied virtue is hard to move. ”

“ What he saw clearly, entranced by the vision, was the future—the free future. He had been touched by the wan wizard of Olive Schreiner's Dream of Wild Bees, and "the ideal was real to him." The things about him, other people's realities, were shadows—oppressive shadows, indeed, but they did not concern him deeply. It was the great currents of life he saw as real things, and among all the confusion of world-movements he could trace the shining stream that ran towards liberty ”

“ Of Gerhart Hauptmann one can say, his art has given meaning to the idea of human love, which in this period is looked upon with suspicious eyes as a bad coin, a new impetus, the reality and symbolic depth of which grips the heart. Out of his books one can draw life more than literature. A strong soul-similarity with Tolstoi might be observed, I think, if Hauptmann were a fighting spirit.
I met the poet among the weavers of the Eulengebirge, Silesia, in the districts of greatest human misery, February, 1891, in Langenbielau, the large Silesian weaving village. ”

“ In the sullen agitation caused by trial and suffering, in the feverish struggle of misery, in the vile slime of egoism, in the subsoils of the houses wherein vegetated Poverty, the creator of Riches, solitary dreamers full of faith in Man, strangers to all, prophets of seditions, moved about like sparks issued from some far-off hearthstone of justice. ”

“ Old Melville had attained his little bit of sunshine rather late in life, but he had called it his own, at least for however short a moment, while most of us others, whom life treats less scurvily, blinded by foolish and selfish desire, cannot even succeed in grasping material happiness, which crosses our roads quite often enough and stands at times right near us, without being recognized. ”

“ Stone carving was applied to architecture, thus colored stones, called mosaics, as wall decorations; from these to the fresco; from the fresco to the pictorial form of painting. To-day the final degeneration of art is in the easel picture, which as an object detached and disassociated from its surroundings, takes refuge in the story-telling phase to justify its raison d'être. But, alas for the easel picture! alas, also, for the usual illustration, without which most literature would be so difficult to understand. In each case the one is there to help out the other's deficiency. ”

“ Everyone stood aghast at such brutality, at such inhumanity to man, in this great free republic of ours. It seemed as if the cup of human endurance had been filled to the brim, as if out of the ranks of the outraged masses some one would rise to call those to account who had caused it all. ”

“ The mills, with the increasing noise of machines that dulls the ears and racks the nerves, are by no means an elevating sight, but they bring the workingmen together and awaken their feeling and understanding of solidarity and the necessity for concerted action. Here, in spite of sunken chests, great fatigue, poor nourishment, one felt the breeze of the struggling proletarian mind that indicated a new land of regeneration, beyond the misery of our times.
For one of the evenings a gathering of the older weavers was arranged. Hauptmann had a plate set for each one. ”

“ The larger emotional life, or inner social impulse emanates from those pioneers who, living beyond existing conditions, are the dynamics of society. Through them life pushes onward. The inner impulse becomes public opinion, public opinion becomes custom, custom crystallizes into law. Now the fresh impulse is needed for new growth; where shall it be sought if not in the expression of the emotional life? What form shall the expression take unless it be the purest and most spontaneous form of art, which is without purpose other than the expression of an impulse? ”

“ He was one of those sensitive beings who continually suffer from the harsh realities of life, who are as naive as children, and therefore as easily disillusionized, and nevertheless cannot renounce their belief in the ideal. Not a day passed that he did not sit several hours before his easel, trying to paint sunshine as it really is. Nobody in this busy world, however, took notice of his efforts or comprehended the pathos of old Melville's life, those fifty years of bad luck. ”

“ What does civilized humanity do with all this splendor? It speculates with it. Usurers, who gamble with the necessities of life, will take possession of Nature's gifts, of wheat and corn, fruit and flowers, and will carry on a shameless trade with them, while millions of toilers, both in country and city, will be permitted to partake of the earth's riches only in medicinal doses and at exorbitant prices. ”

“ The first impression of Hauptmann was that he was not a man of easy social carriage, rather discreet, almost shy, and uncommunicative. An absorbed, deep dreamer, yet a keen observer of the human all too human, not easily led astray, not Goethe, rather Hoelderlin. ”

“ If, instead of building prisons where human life is entombed, libraries where literature moulds, museums where art becomes archaic, why not establish centers of education, where spontaneous expression is encouraged, and where the soul, mind, and hand are simultaneously developed. ”