Mary Antin Quotes
The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school.
On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles.
The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them.
You heard on all sides that the brightest Jewish children were turned down if the examining officers did not like the turn of their noses.
Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.
I have so little mastered the art of tranquil living that wherever I go I trail storm clouds of drama around me.
You went up to be examined with the other Jewish children, your heart heavy about that matter of your nose.
Such creatures of accident are we, liable to a thousand deaths before we are born. But once we are here, we may create our own world, if we choose.
There was one public school for boys, and one for girls, but Jewish children were admitted in limited numbers - only ten to a hundred; and even the lucky ones had their troubles.
A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.
I want now to be of today. It is painful to be conscious of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness.
There is never a Jewish community without its scholars, but where Jews may not be both intellectuals and Jews, they prefer to remain Jews.
