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Caribbean Quotes
Caribbean
by
James A. Michener7,945 ratings, 3.98 average rating, 476 reviews
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Caribbean Quotes
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“While César Vaval’s parents were still alive they spent much effort in teaching him the things they believed he ought to know: “No slavery is any good. Danish is worst by far. French is best, maybe. But you live for one thing only, to be free.” His parents had died at about the same time, worked to death by the owner of their plantation, but before they died they told their son: “Study everything the white man does. Where does he get his power? Where does he hide his guns? How does he sell the sugar we make? And no matter how you do it, learn to read his books. There’s where he keeps his secrets, and unless you master them, you’ll always be a slave.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“Traveler, you who sail into the Caribbean in silvered yacht or gilded cruise ship, pause as you enter these waters to remember that deep below rest three men of honor who helped determine the history of this onetime Spanish Lake: Sir John Hawkins, builder of the English navy; Sir Francis Drake, conqueror of all known seas; and Admiral Ledesma, stubborn enhancer of his king’s prerogatives and the interests of his own strong family.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“Love is the self-revelation of two souls. Sometimes it comes in a blinding moment in only one day, sometimes after a slow awakening of eleven years. God takes no cognizance of the timetable.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“I do wish you’d break the careless habit of using the word American as if you had stolen it from the rest of us. Use norteamericano, because we Cubans and Mexicans and Uruguayans, we’re also Americans.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“Bolon understood why his mother had insisted on this pilgrimage, for he knew that knowledge of the past gave men courage to face the future. p43”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“The realization that he might be leaving Ix Zubin forever overwhelmed him and he fell silent, not knowing what to say. Ill at ease about revealing the love he felt for her, he made a totally different observation: 'It's difficult when the world's changing... when the old dies but you can't yet see the new.' p46”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“As a young naval officer of unusual daring, he had won an enviable reputation for defending against pirates the Spanish armadas which carried Peruvian gold and Panamanian silver across the Caribbean on its way to Sevilla in southern Spain.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“That’s your town, Santo Domingo,” Ocampo saw the first organized settlement of the New World, capital not only of this island but of all Spain’s possessions in the lands Colón had discovered.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“Reluctant to proffer any further observations which might distress this elderly gentleman, she gazed about her at the handsome plaza, and the sadness which comes with the passing of old values assailed her, so that she dropped her head,”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“English-style order in government is not the world’s greatest boon,” and he continued in words that the first Ledesma in Cartagena might have used: “To see your family prosper, all members of it. To know a religion which gives you solace. To feel your spirit free to soar. To burst with poetic idealism, those are the abiding virtues.” He paused, stared at Thérèse, and asked: “Do people in Gary, Indiana, have it as good as we do here in Cartagena?”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“Anyone who thinks he can lump them all together and form a cohesive Hispanic minority that he can shift this way or that is out of his mind.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“But we must remember that Al Capone made Chicago a similar capital in his day and Chicago didn’t suffer more than three or four decades. Neither will Miami.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“As the man spoke, Calderon was thinking of the recent scandals on Wall Street in which Anglos of supposed probity had stolen the investors of the nation blind, and he felt that the young man was overstating his case,”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“They’ll be illiterates, many of them will be black, and they’ll all want to settle in Miami. “The great risk these people will pose is that they’ll introduce into Miami life the political corruption that seems to infect all Hispanic government: bribery of officials, fraud in elections, nepotism in political appointments, and invariably putting the interests of one’s family members ahead of the general welfare. These characteristics are already surfacing in Miami, and with a constant influx of new arrivals the problem will worsen.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“Cricket was at the same time both the custodian of social principles and the arena in which men met as equals.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“Our fight to bring Eyre to justice is a struggle we may lose, but in doing so, we shall educate the people in the greater questions of social justice, and it is our war for the reform of Parliament that we shall win.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“They interpreted his cruelty against blacks as a frightening throwback to the days of slavery, a last-gasp attempt of wealthy landowners to protect their interests, and an affront to all decent Christians and lovers of liberty.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“But there was another group of British leaders, more sober and less sentimental, who deplored Eyre’s behavior on a distant island far from the scrutiny of Parliament, and again some of the greatest names rallied to this version of the cause: Charles Darwin, the geneticist; Herbert Spencer, the moral philosopher; Thomas Huxley, the scientist; John Bright, the powerful Quaker reformer; and again above all, John Stuart Mill, perhaps the wisest and most brilliant man in the world at that time.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“In sturdy, unwavering support of Eyre were five of the nation’s greatest writers: Thomas Carlyle, the moralist who scorned niggers; John Ruskin, the popular aesthete; Charles Dickens, read by everyone; Charles Kingsley, who preached “manly Christianity” and wrote enormously popular novels; and above all, Alfred Tennyson, the wildly acclaimed poet laureate.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“the queen had evaded answering every one of their complaints: “How can we work if no work is offered? How can we be industrious if we’re allowed no land on which to prove ourselves?”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“Only that terribly cruel command: “Work for your white masters when they want you, for as long as they want you, and at whatever wages they graciously offer.” Jason Pembroke, on finishing his reading of the letter, muttered: “It could have been written by Thomas Carlyle.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“It would never be known for certain who drafted the reply to the starving farmers, but since it was delivered to Jamaica as Victoria’s personal response to their pleas, it became known in history as The Queen’s Advice:”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“In other words, Carlyle, a devotee of the master-race theory, was calling for the reimposition of slavery, at least in the West Indies, where lack of slaves had slowed the sugar industry.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“When emancipation came to the British Caribbean in 1834, the former slaves had been tricked into believing that land would be made available to them, but the Legislative Assembly, composed in large part of white plantation owners and their half-caste employees, refused to cede any land, and the lower classes had no recourse.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“Spanish holdings in the Caribbean retained a brutal slavery long after other areas had stopped, with Cuba continuing till an unbelievable 1886.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
“French victory would probably have been attained had not Napoleon, believing that he had unlimited power over men, issued the appalling decree which restored slavery in Guadeloupe.”
― Caribbean
― Caribbean
