The Confessions Of Nat Turner Quotes
"It is afternoon. The day is clear, sparkling, and the sun seems to cast no shadow anywhere."
"The building has no door, at least there is no door that I can see."
"But as is my custom whenever I have this dream or vision, I don’t dwell upon the meaning of the strange building."
"I have no doubt, however, that it was all connected with my childhood."
"For an instant I was on the verge of waking him with a whisper, for we had had no chance to speak, but the sound of his breathing was slow and heavy with exhaustion."
"I still had this craving to perform a daily act which for the years of my grown-up life had become as simple and as natural as a bodily function."
"For a long while I sat motionless in the light, waiting for Gray to return."
"In the face of such adversity it must be a Negro’s Christian faith, his understanding of a kind of righteousness at the heart of suffering."
"But now as I sat there amid the sunlight and the flickering shadows of falling leaves, I could no longer say that I felt this to be true."
"But the answer was not the Lord’s. It was Gray’s."
"The spirit of God hovered very close to me, advising me in this fashion: Son of man, prophesy, and say, Thus saith the Lord; Say, a sword, a sword is sharpened, and also furbished."
"Often as I brooded over these lines, I wondered why God should wish to spare the well-meaning and slay the helpless; nonetheless, it was His word."
"For on these mornings as I looked down upon the gray and somber and shriveling landscape it seemed as if His will and my mission could not be more plain and intelligible."
"Your bodies, you know, are not your own; they are at the disposal of those you belong to, but your precious souls are still your own."
"This feeling Hark called 'black-assed,' and it comes as close to summing up the numbness and dread which dwells in every Negro's heart as any word I have ever known."
"The contentment a Negro takes in a white man’s misery, existing like a delicious tidbit among bleak and scanty rations, can hardly be overestimated."
"Your reputation precedes you, as it were. For several years now there has come to my attention wondrous bruit of a remarkable slave."
"For to believe that from this downtrodden race, there could arise one single specimen capable of spelling cat is asking rational intelligence to believe that balmy King George the Third was not a dastardly tyrant."
"Beat a nigger, starve him leave him wallowing in his own shit, and he will be yours for life."
"Awe him by some unforeseen hint of philanthropy, tickle him with the idea of hope, and he will want to slice your throat."
"It is a folly to look for good days so long as sin is so high, and those that study its nourishment so many."
"By the Lord’s grace all things can be believed."
"If men, therefore, would mend, so would the times."
"Christianity is finished and done with. Don’t you know that, Reverend?"
"The time between this and your execution will necessarily be very short, and your only hope must be in another world."
"You have been convicted of plotting in cold blood the indiscriminate destruction of men, of helpless women, and of infant children."
"You forced them unprepared from time to eternity … Borne down by this load of guilt, your only justification is that you were led away by fanaticism."
"It is my conviction that the more religiously and intellectually enlightened a Negro is made, the better for himself, his master, and the commonweal."
"It is the folly of man that makes the world bitter."
"The most futile thing a man can do is to ponder the alternatives, to stew and fret over the life that might have been lived."
"Suppose in the first place I had lived out my life at Turner’s Mill."
"For the Preacher was right: He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."
"How Miss Nell kept after me! I never forgot these glossy-haired seraphs with their soft tutorial murmurs."
"Would you gain the tender creature, softly, gently, kindly treat her."
"It is a cancer eating at our bowels, the source of all our misery, individual, political, and economic."
"I pray nightly for the miracle, for the divine guidance which will somehow show us the way out of this terrible condition."
"A darky, gentlemen, is basically as unteachable as a chicken, and that is the simple fact of the matter."
"And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes."
"I have long debated in my mind and heart, whether to tell you of this other decision, for fear that it would hinder you in some way."
"I recall thinking then: Maybe not now. Maybe He doesn’t want to speak now, but at another time."
"For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one Spirit."
"Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations."
"A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night."
"I thought: He’s just testing me now. He’s just seeing if I can baptize."
"It was as if all the people had suddenly vanished from the earth."
"Real hatred of the sort of which I speak—hatred so pure and obdurate that no sympathy, no human warmth, no flicker of compassion can make the faintest nick or scratch upon the stony surface of its being—is not common to all Negroes."
"It seemed a friendly and peaceable idea, to fall asleep amid the snow and the pines and never wake up—delivered into the bosom of eternity, forever safe from mean and dishonorable toil."
"A poor field Negro may once in a while be struck by the whip of an overseer riding on a tall white horse."
"I am in no way blaming you for lacking the presence of mind to come to me earlier when I may have been able to do something about it."
"It was my habit therefore not to waste time with the other Negroes who stood about chattering idly or wrestling in the dust of the field behind the market or quarreling over some black girl of the town."
"I had become at that time deeply involved in reading the Prophets—mainly Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, whose relevance to my own self and future I had only commenced to divine."
"This is the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke."
"But there is peril enough in the first hint of a black man’s lust for a white woman."
"For where else but in the promises of the Bible could a Negro look?"
"The words of the Prophet Ezra were of consolation during that strange period; like him I felt that now for a little space grace hath been shewn from the Lord my God, to give me a little reviving in my bondage."
"Often during those years I reflected upon the mysterious providence of God which on that icy cold day of a February past had seen to it that I not be swallowed up into the ant-swarm and the faceless extinction of a nigger-crawling 10,000-acre plantation in the deepest South."
"I was a very special case and I decided upon humility, a soft voice, and houndlike obedience."
"I was filled with somber feelings that I was unable to banish, deeply troubled that it was not a white person’s abuse or scorn or even indifference which could ignite in me this murderous hatred but his pity, maybe even his tenderest moment of charity."
"My heart, as I say, shrank inside me, died, disappeared, and rage like a newborn child exploded there to fill the void."
"White man's religion don't teach nothin' to black folk except to obey ole mastah and live humble—walk light and talk small."
"Them peoples was Jewish peoples an' they had names just like us black folk—like you right there, Nathan, an' you, Joe—Joe is a Jewish name—an' you there, Daniel."
"They that carried us away captive required of us a song.’ Yes! Leave off from that singin’, leave off from that banjo, leave off from that buck-an’-wing!"
"You is men! You is men, my dear brothers, look at yo’selves, look to yo’ pride!"
"Black folk ain’t never goin’ to be led from bondage without they has pride!"
"Black folk ain’t never goin’ to be no great nation until they studies to love they own black skin."
"Only then will the first be last, and the last first."
"I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt, for I will there make of thee a great nation."
"They that carried us away captive required of us a song. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’"
"Pride, pride, everlasting pride, pride will make you free!"
"Negroes who had run away were likely to have fiery spirits."
"On pain of death, each of them had been sworn to the profoundest secrecy."
"My own pride was somehow diminished by the certain knowledge that there existed other Negroes, and many of them, who to gain no more than a plug of tobacco or a couple of fishhooks or half a pound of stew beef would tattle away their own mother’s life."
"Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight."
"I knew that my cause was just and, being just, would in its strength overcome all obstacles, all hardships, all inclement turns of fortune."
"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: Because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love."
"I saw in the night visions, and behold a beast dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; it devoured and brake in pieces."
"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"
"Preacher man, less’n you can handle de ax you cain’t handle de army."
"You better study ’bout dat, sweet, or me an’ you’s really gwine hab a rookus!"
"To draw the blood of white men is holy in God’s eyes."
"Ah God! At that moment I was overcome again by such dizziness."
"If’n you cain’t make de red juice run you cain’t run de army!"
"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end."
"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God and he shall be my son."