Frederick Douglass

There are thoughtful days in the lives of children—at least there were in mine when they grapple with all the great, primary subjects of knowledge, and reach, in a moment, conclusions which no subsequent experience can shake.

For my own part, I had now become altogether too big for my chains.

The intense desires, now felt, to be free, quickened by my present favorable circumstances, brought me to the determination to act, as well as to think and speak.

Their apparent joy only deepened the shades of my sorrow.

To be shut up entirely to the past and present, is abhorrent to the human mind; it is to the soul—whose life and happiness is unceasing progress—what the prison is to the body; a blight and mildew, a hell of horrors.

The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past, troubled me, and I longed to have a future—a future with hope in it.

The cruelty of Aunt Katy, the hunger and cold I suffered, and the terrible reports of wrong and outrage which came to my ear, together with what I almost daily witnessed, led me, when yet but eight or nine years old, to wish I had never…

From this monstrous relation there springs an unceasing stream of most revolting cruelties.

I hated slavery, always, and the desire for freedom only needed a favorable breeze, to fan it into a blaze, at any moment.

But the grim visage of slavery can assume no smiles which can fascinate the partially enlightened slave, into a forgetfulness of his bondage, nor of the desirableness of liberty.

As I grew older and more thoughtful, I was more and more filled with a sense of my wretchedness.

But the kindness of the slavemaster only gilds the chain of slavery, and detracts nothing from its weight or power.