7. What passages strike you as insightful, even profound? Perhaps a bit of dialog that's funny or poignant or that encapsulates a character?

[Jen]

7. What passages strike you as insightful, even profound? Perhaps a bit of dialog that's funny or poignant or that encapsulates a character?

[Eadie]

“John had once said to me, in a complaining tone, that Father had taught us to be afraid of no man except him. And it was true. Father always insisted that we think for ourselves in every way, except when we disagreed with him, and that we hold ourselves independent of every man’s will, except his. He wanted us simultaneously to be independent and yet to serve him. Father was to be our Abraham; we were to be his little Isaacs. We were supposed to know ahead of time, however, the happy outcome of the story—we were supposed to know that it was a story, not about us and our willingness to lie on a rock on Mount Moriah and be sacrificed under his knife, but about our father and his willingness to obey his terrible God.”

[[deleted user]]

"But who amongst your new, young historians and biographers, even amongst those who loathe him or think him mad, has considered the price paid for that sort of greatness by those of us who were his family? Those of us who neither examined him from a safe distance, as you do, nor stood demurely in his protective shadow, as we have so often been portrayed, but who lived every day in the full glare of his light?"

[John]

My page references are to the HarperCollins paperback edition published in 1999.

"No matter how used to the presence of Negroes I became - and since my early childhood, Father, whenever possible, had brought all types of Negroes into our household, providing us with daily, respectful proximity to them - a black person made me constantly conscious of my whiteness."

"But in those warm days of spring and early summer, as we settled into our farm, the tumult that habitually inhabited my own mind was eased somewhat, and my earlier turbulence and confusion seemed almost to have occurred in the mind of another man than myself, some fellow younger than I, whose wrathfulness and turmoil had kept him from appreciating the singular beauty of the place and the pleasures of hard work well done and the company of a large, skilled, and cheerfully employed family." p.203 (Chapter 7)

". . . for there were many radical abolitionists whose genteel fastidiousness rendered them wholly ineffective, and Father enjoyed pointing them out to us. 'Boston Ladies,' he called them, although most of them were men." p.246 (Chapter 8)

"[W]hen one understands a human being, no matter how oppressive he has been, compassion inevitably follows." p. 251 (Chapter 8)

"Only in an evil and inhuman land, Owen, is it a crime to slay the man who enslaves you." p.281 (Chapter 9)

"In some countries, I said to myself, the only life you can properly desire is that of destroyer." p.378 (Chapter 12)

"If you yourself are not a victim, you cannot claim to see the world as the victim does." p.423 (Chapter 13)

"'Words, words, words,' Father said. 'They won't act until they themselves are physically or financially threatened,' he insisted." p.425 (Chapter 13)

"[D]ue to our obsession, we were, as it were, insane. Which to the Negroes, to Lyman, made us perfectly comprehensible and trustworthy - sane. Not just another dangerous batch of well0-intentioned, Christian white folks." p.503 (Chapter 14)

"Before Kansas, the Old Man had always been larger than his reputation; after Kansas, he was smaller." 514 (Chapter 15)

"I was viewed, as much in Lawrence as among the pro-slavers in Atchison, as the most dangerous. They said it was because I spoke to no one, except Father and my brothers, and showed no human feeling, except for a single-minded desire to exterminate the man-sellers. They were right to fear me. I was an assassin with no principle or ideology and no apparent religion, save one: death to slavery." p.586 (Chapter 18)

"And even today, these many years after, it still rankles that, whilst I and my family and our comrades were laying about in Kansas with our broadswords, bloodying ourselves and our enemies and putting at ultimate risk our lives and our immortal souls, Mr. Garrison, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Whittier, and all those other good men and women back in Boston and Concord and New York were adjusting their sleeves so as not to spot their starched cuffs." p.622 (Chapter 19)

[Diane]

I enjoyed reading all the different passages that everyone quoted.

"Slavery, however, was the sum of all villainies, and its abolition was therefore the first essential work of all modern reformers. He was perfectly convinced that if the American people did not end it speedily, human freedom and republican liberty would pass forever from this nation and possibly from all mankind".

[John]

Diane wrote: "I enjoyed reading all the different passages that everyone quoted.

"Slavery, however, was the sum of all villainies, and its abolition was therefore the first essential work of all modern reformer..."

I remember that line, but hadn't marked it when I was reading - "the sum of all villainies" - that about sums it up.

[Kristel]

I put some quotes into my review. I will not repeat them. John has some of mine and some that I didn't catch that are really great.