It was, we may be sure, because with unflinching determination and with no thought of surrender he faced the great alternative,--the choice which the cynical, thoughtless, busy, modern world spreads grimly before its greater souls--food or beauty, bread and butter, or ideals.
Du Bois discusses the difficult choices artists face between material needs and artistic integrity.
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Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.
If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.
So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.