His Family Quotes

“And there came to him a feeling which he had often had before in many different places--that he himself was a part of all this, the great, blind, wistful soul of mankind, which had been here before he was born and would be here when he was dead--still groping, yearning, struggling upward, on and on--to something distant as the sun. And still would he be part of it all, through the eager lives of his children.”
― Earnest Poole, His Family

“It's hard to keep up with your children,' he said. 'It means keeping up with everything new. And you stay in your rut and then it's too late. Before you know it you are old.”
― Earnest Poole, His Family

“He saw each of his daughters, part of himself. And he remembered what Judith had said: 'You will live on in our children's lives.' And he began to get glimmerings of a new immortality, made up of generations, an endless succession of other lives extending into the future.”
― Earnest Poole, His Family

“Queer, how a man can neglect his children, as I have done ... when the thing he wants most in life is to see each one ...happy.”
― Ernest Poole, His Family

“Yes, read about jobs and your hours and wages. Yes, you must strike, you must have better lives. But you must read also about the stars—and about the big spaces—silent—not one single little sound for many, many million years. To be free you must grow as big as that—inside of your head, inside of your soul. It is not enough to be free of a czar, a kaiser or a sweatshop boss. What will you do when they are gone? My fine people, how will you run the world? You are deaf and blind, you must be free to open your own ears and eyes, to look into the books and see what is there—great thoughts and feelings, great ideas! And when you have seen, then you must think—you must think it all out every time! That is freedom!”
― Ernest Poole, His Family

“I wonder if it won't be the same with the children as it has been with us. No matter how long each one of them lives, won't their lives feel to them unfinished like ours, only just beginning? I wonder how far they will go. And then their children will grow up and it will be the same with them. Unfinished lives. Oh, dearie, what children all of us are.”
― Earnest Poole, His Family

“You're like nearly all American women--married or single, young or old--you're all of you scared to death about sex--just as your Puritan mothers were! And you leave it alone--you keep it down--you never give it a chance--you're afraid! But I'm not afraid--and I'm living my life! And let me tell you I'm not alone! There are hundreds and thousands doing the same--right here in New York City to-night! It's been abroad for years and years--in Rome and Berlin, in Paris and London--and now, thank God, it has come over here! If our husbands can do it, why can't we?”
― Earnest Poole, His Family

“Would Edith ever be like that, a mere custodian of the past? If she did, he thought, she would be false to the very traditions she tried to preserve. For her forefathers had never been mere guardians of things gone by. Always they had been pioneers. That house had not been old to them, but a thrilling new adventure.”
― Ernest Poole, His Family

“When the women get the vote, we'll spend more money on the children.”
― Earnest Poole, His Family

“He had thought of childhood as something intimate and pure, inside his home, his family. Instead of that, in Deborah's school he had been disturbed and thrilled by the presence all around him of something wild, barbaric, dark, compounded of the city streets, of surging crowds, of rushing feet, of turmoil, filth, disease and death, of poverty and vice and crime.”
― Earnest Poole, His Family

“I wonder if it won't be the same with the children as it has been with us. No matter how long each one of them lives, won't their lives feel to them unfinished like ours, only just beginning? I wonder how far they will go. And then their children will grow up and it will be the same with them. Unfinished lives. Oh, dearie, what children all of us are.”
― Ernest Poole, His Family

“I suppose you know what you're about." "Oh no, I don't," she answered. "I never know what I'm about. If you always do, you miss so much—you get into a solemn habit of trying nothing till you're sure.”
― Ernest Poole, His Family