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beth_arnold's Reviews (779)
"There are darknesses in life, and there are lights; you are one of the lights."
"a new fear comes: that I may have been foolish in thus depriving myself of the power of waking. I might want it. Here comes sleep. Good-night."
"All men are mad in some way or the other"
"Ah, well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. It is the end!"
He turned to me, and said with grave solemnity:-
"Not so; alas! not so. It is only the beginning!”
"I pity your poor bleeding heart; and I love you the more because it does so bleed."
"We learn from failure, not from success!"
"a new fear comes: that I may have been foolish in thus depriving myself of the power of waking. I might want it. Here comes sleep. Good-night."
"All men are mad in some way or the other"
"Ah, well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. It is the end!"
He turned to me, and said with grave solemnity:-
"Not so; alas! not so. It is only the beginning!”
"I pity your poor bleeding heart; and I love you the more because it does so bleed."
"We learn from failure, not from success!"
“And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.”
“Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”
“For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.”
“His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind.”
“Bullies were scared people hiding inside scary people.”
“Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”
“For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.”
“His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind.”
“Bullies were scared people hiding inside scary people.”
“People are messy, and love can be ugly. I’m inclined to always err on the side of compassion.”
“The world doesn’t give things, you take things. If you learn one thing from me, it should probably be that.”
“I was gorgeous, even at fourteen. Oh, I know the whole world prefers a woman who doesn’t know her power, but I’m sick of all that. I turned heads.”
“Make them pay you what they would pay a white man.”
“Don't ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box. Don't do that.”
“You have to find a job that makes your heart feel big instead of one that makes it feel small.”
“Be wary of men with something to prove.”
“You can be sorry about something and not regret it,”
“I made it fifty-fifty. Which is about the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love, give them just enough good to make them stick through a hell of a lot of bad.”
“The world doesn’t give things, you take things. If you learn one thing from me, it should probably be that.”
“I was gorgeous, even at fourteen. Oh, I know the whole world prefers a woman who doesn’t know her power, but I’m sick of all that. I turned heads.”
“Make them pay you what they would pay a white man.”
“Don't ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box. Don't do that.”
“You have to find a job that makes your heart feel big instead of one that makes it feel small.”
“Be wary of men with something to prove.”
“You can be sorry about something and not regret it,”
“I made it fifty-fifty. Which is about the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love, give them just enough good to make them stick through a hell of a lot of bad.”
“Patience is the answer to so many of life's questions.”
“People get preoccupied with the fiction of truth. The lives we lead need to be gold-plated nowadays. A series of varnished truths for the sake of how we appear on the outside...Nobody is interested in reality anymore. That's something they don't want to like or share or follow. I can understand that, but living a make-believe life can be dangerous.
“I'm not sorry for what I did, I just never wanted anyone to find out.”
“I already feel out of my depth but nobody else on this team can swim any better.”
“The lies we tell ourselves are always the most dangerous...honesty loses every time to a lie less ordinary.”
“Parents spend their youth trying to understand their children; children spend their adulthood trying to understand their parents.”
“People get preoccupied with the fiction of truth. The lives we lead need to be gold-plated nowadays. A series of varnished truths for the sake of how we appear on the outside...Nobody is interested in reality anymore. That's something they don't want to like or share or follow. I can understand that, but living a make-believe life can be dangerous.
“I'm not sorry for what I did, I just never wanted anyone to find out.”
“I already feel out of my depth but nobody else on this team can swim any better.”
“The lies we tell ourselves are always the most dangerous...honesty loses every time to a lie less ordinary.”
“Parents spend their youth trying to understand their children; children spend their adulthood trying to understand their parents.”
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“Britain has no ‘white history’. British history is the multiracial, interracial story of a nation interdependent on trade, cultural influence and immigration from Africa, India, Central and East Asia, and other regions and continents populated by people who are not white, and before that, invasion by successive waves of European tribes most of whom, had the concept of whiteness existed at the time, would not have fitted into it either.”
“One of the side effects of a society that claims not to see race, is that anyone whose appearance is an excessive reminder of difference needs to conform. Failing to do so is frequently perceived as an act of radical politics.”
“I'm not sure which of these states of affairs, the 1960s attitude which was to ignore it, or today's attitude which is to marginalise it as 'black history', is more dishonest. Maybe they're as bad as each other.”
“It's no exaggeration to say that the wealth of the royal family, much like the wealth of the nation itself, was built on the back of slavery and related trade investment and industry.”
What I should have been taught in school and definitely wasn't:
• of the 12million slaves (conservative estimate) abducted from Africa, 40% were transported on British ships
• well over 1 million were put to work (and often to death) in British colonies
• Britain made more profit from its slave trading investments, and extracted more wealth from the Caribbean, than any other European slave-owning nation
• The scales were tipped towards abolition when Parliament’s stance was influenced by rapidly declining sugar prices, due to over-production in the West Indies
• The 800,000 slaves we ‘owned’ at the point of British abolition were valued at £47 million. I already knew that £20 million was paid by taxpayers and went to compensate the slave owners for their ‘loss of goods’. We only stopped paying this in 2015. What I didn’t know, however, was that the remaining £27 million was paid off by the slaves themselves…by working for free for 4 years. They were then left illiterate, unskilled, psychologically traumatised and cut off from their African homelands.
• Post-British abolition, the lack of new slaves from Britain led to worsening conditions for existing slaves. Overseers were given bonuses for each female slave they impregnated – essentially funding rape.
• for those profiting from the trade of Africans, the greatest returns from slavery came after Britain’s abolition. By 1840 there were more slaves crossing than the Atlantic than there had been before. British investors and businesses were among those profiting.
• There was nothing to stop traders investing in the ownership of slaves in nations where slavery was still legal. British businesses set up partnerships with those Cuba (abolished 1870) and Brazil (abolished 1888).
• Brits still profiting in other ways: 80% of the goods used to exchange for men, women and children off the coast of West Africa were British - fuelling our economic boom throughout the Victorian era (including our industrial revolution).
• Slavery deprived huge swathes of Africa of millions of its working age people (often the strongest and most able) for over 400yrs. (something obviously known but never consciously thought about in terms of what this did to Africa's progress).
• Recent survey showed that the majority of Brits thought the empire was something to be proud of - 3x more than those who thought it was something to be ashamed of.
• Sylvia Pankhurst was one of the only people to give Black activist, Claude McKay, a platform in her left-wing publication, The Worker’s Dreadnaught. Her beliefs were that female suffrage and racial equality went hand-in-hand - unlike other members of her family. As well as giving a platform to Black voices, she was also a patron of the International African Service Bureau, who fought for complete national independence from white domination.
“One of the side effects of a society that claims not to see race, is that anyone whose appearance is an excessive reminder of difference needs to conform. Failing to do so is frequently perceived as an act of radical politics.”
“I'm not sure which of these states of affairs, the 1960s attitude which was to ignore it, or today's attitude which is to marginalise it as 'black history', is more dishonest. Maybe they're as bad as each other.”
“It's no exaggeration to say that the wealth of the royal family, much like the wealth of the nation itself, was built on the back of slavery and related trade investment and industry.”
What I should have been taught in school and definitely wasn't:
• of the 12million slaves (conservative estimate) abducted from Africa, 40% were transported on British ships
• well over 1 million were put to work (and often to death) in British colonies
• Britain made more profit from its slave trading investments, and extracted more wealth from the Caribbean, than any other European slave-owning nation
• The scales were tipped towards abolition when Parliament’s stance was influenced by rapidly declining sugar prices, due to over-production in the West Indies
• The 800,000 slaves we ‘owned’ at the point of British abolition were valued at £47 million. I already knew that £20 million was paid by taxpayers and went to compensate the slave owners for their ‘loss of goods’. We only stopped paying this in 2015. What I didn’t know, however, was that the remaining £27 million was paid off by the slaves themselves…by working for free for 4 years. They were then left illiterate, unskilled, psychologically traumatised and cut off from their African homelands.
• Post-British abolition, the lack of new slaves from Britain led to worsening conditions for existing slaves. Overseers were given bonuses for each female slave they impregnated – essentially funding rape.
• for those profiting from the trade of Africans, the greatest returns from slavery came after Britain’s abolition. By 1840 there were more slaves crossing than the Atlantic than there had been before. British investors and businesses were among those profiting.
• There was nothing to stop traders investing in the ownership of slaves in nations where slavery was still legal. British businesses set up partnerships with those Cuba (abolished 1870) and Brazil (abolished 1888).
• Brits still profiting in other ways: 80% of the goods used to exchange for men, women and children off the coast of West Africa were British - fuelling our economic boom throughout the Victorian era (including our industrial revolution).
• Slavery deprived huge swathes of Africa of millions of its working age people (often the strongest and most able) for over 400yrs. (something obviously known but never consciously thought about in terms of what this did to Africa's progress).
• Recent survey showed that the majority of Brits thought the empire was something to be proud of - 3x more than those who thought it was something to be ashamed of.
• Sylvia Pankhurst was one of the only people to give Black activist, Claude McKay, a platform in her left-wing publication, The Worker’s Dreadnaught. Her beliefs were that female suffrage and racial equality went hand-in-hand - unlike other members of her family. As well as giving a platform to Black voices, she was also a patron of the International African Service Bureau, who fought for complete national independence from white domination.
