Amos Fortune, Free Man Quotes

“Once, long years ago, I thought I could set a canoe-load of my people free by breaking the bands at my wrists and killing the white man who held the weapon. I had the strength in my hands to do such a deed and I had the fire within, but I didn't do it."
"What held you back?"
Amos shook his head. "My hand was restrained and I'm glad that it was, for the years between have shown me that it does a man no good to be free until he knows how to live, how to walk in step with God.”
― Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man

“some things are too wonderful even for a child, and freedom's one of them”
― Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man

“What right had she to oppose him? Yet it was he who had given her freedom. The word was meaningless unless in its light each one lived up to his highest and his best.”
― Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man

“He said little about his dream but he nourished it in his heart as the best place for a dream to grow.”
― Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man

“Once it was his hard-earned money that had been used to buy her freedom. How could she speak against his doing something with what was his for another in need?”
― Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man

“But even while Lily was his wife, Amos thought of Ath-mun - now only a faint frail part of memory but still dear. He hoped that in making one black woman free he had made Ath-mun free if she was in need of freedom.”
― Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man

“In the churchyard in Jaffrey, New Hampshire are two handsome headstones. The slate weathered well and William Farnsworth's chiseling is clearly readable. They say:

Sacred to the memory of Amos Fortune who was born free in Africa a slave in America he purchased liberty professed Christianity lived reputably and died hopefully
Nov. 17, 1801
Aet. 91

Sacred to the memory of Violate by sale the slave of Amos Fortune by marriage his wife by her fidelity his friend and solace she died his widow
Sept. 13 1802
Aet. 73”
― Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man

“There's a fire that burns fast the more fuel goes on it and that's shiftlessness," Violet said stoutly. "Lois is a shiftless woman and money is just so much fuel to her fire.”
― Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man

“..for Africa was in a way none of them could explain linked up with heaven and they thought of the two places with the same reverence and ultimate longing.”
― Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man

“Always she thought of him as climbing some mountain in his mind, like that great one to the west on which his eyes would dwell so often and from which he seemed to derive something that was even more than strength.”
― Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man

“Loveliest of any blossoming thing to her was that green stalk with its white bells. White was the most beautiful color she knew. Yet when she would say that to Amos he would remind her that the brown of the earth from which the flowers came was a good color too.”
― Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man

“Samuel George looked closely at the freed Negro facing him and he thought that though the man had the look of being familiar with time he bore none of the marks that time could leave. He was well built and well muscled, carrying his head high. There was gray in his hair, but his face was furrowed more by laughter than by years.”
― Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man