On the record
How heavy a journey for weary feet! what wings must Atalanta have to flit over all this hollow and hill, through sour wood and sullen water, and by the red waste of sun-baked clay!
Said by
W.E.B. Du Bois
Source
gutenberg.orgW.E.B. Du Bois: “How heavy a journey for weary feet! what wings must Atalanta have to flit over all this hollow and hill, through sour…”
Editor's note · Context
This passage poetically describes the arduous journey of progress and the challenges that must be overcome to achieve it.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Jan 1, 1903
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.
Jan 1, 1903
Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to…
Jan 1, 1903
So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?
Jan 1, 1903
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.