In The Last Camp They All Ate Grass, Until The Authorities Forbade Them To Pull It Up. They Were Accustomed To Having The Fruits Of Their Little Communal Gardens Stolen By The Guards, After They Had Done All The Work; But At The Last Camp Everything Was Stolen.

-Martha Gellhorn

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In The Last Camp

Martha Gellhorn

Topic

Garden

Done

Littles

More From Martha Gellhorn

It Would Be A Bitter Cosmic Joke If We Destroy Ourselves Due To Atrophy Of The Imagination.

Imagination

Bitterness

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What The Trees Can Do Handsomely-greening And Flowering, Fading And Then The Falling Of Leaves-human Beings Cannot Do With Dignity, Let Alone Without Pain.

Pain

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By Its Existence, The Peace Movement Denies That Governments Know Best; It Stands For A Different Order Of Priorities: The Human Race Comes First.

Peace

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From The Earliest Wars Of Men To Our Last Heart-breaking Worldwide Effort, All We Could Do Was Kill Ourselves. Now We Are Able To Kill The Future.

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Heart

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The Only Way I Can Pay Back For What Fate And Society Have Handed Me Is To Try, In Minor Totally Useless Ways, To Make An Angry Sound Against Injustice.

Fate

Trying

Useless

Why Do People Talk Of The Horrors Of Old Age? It's Great. I Feel Like A Fine Old Car With The Parts Gradually Wearing Out, But I'm Not Complaining,... Those Who Find Growing Old Terrible Are People Who Haven't Done What They Wanted With Their Lives.

Car

People

Age

America Has Made No Reparation To The Vietnamese, Nothing. We Are The Richest People In The World And They Are Among The Poorest. We Savaged Them, Though They Had Never Hurt Us, And We Cannot Find It In Our Hearts, Our Honor, To Give Them Help-because The Government Of Vietnam Is Communist. And Perhaps Because They Won.

Hurt

War

Heart

My Definition Of What Makes A Journey Wholly Or Partially Horrible Is Boredom.

Journey

Boredom

Definitions

In More Than Half The Nations Of Our World, Torture Certifies That The Form Of Government Is Tyranny. Only Tyranny, No Matter How Camouflaged, Needs And Employs Torturers. Torture Has No Ideology.

Our World

Government

Needs

Gradually I Came To Realize That People Will More Readily Swallow Lies Than Truth, As If The Taste Of Lies Was Homey, Appetizing: A Habit.

Lying

People

Deceit

Between His Eyes, There Were Four Lines, The Marks Of Such Misery As Children Should Never Feel. He Spoke With That Wonderful Whisky Voice That So Many Spanish Children Have, And He Was A Tough And Entire Little Boy.

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Eye

Boys

After A Lifetime Of War-watching, I See War As An Endemic Human Disease, And Governments Are The Carriers.

War

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Disease

All Amateur Travellers Have Experienced Horror Journeys, Long Or Short, Sooner Or Later, One Way Or Another. As A Student Of Disaster, I Note That We React Alike To Our Tribulations: Frayed And Bitter At The Time, Proud Afterwards. Nothing Is Better For Self-esteem Than Survival.

Travel

Self Esteem

Journey

In November You Begin To Know How Long The Winter Will Be.

Winter

Long

November

I Know Enough To Know That No Woman Should Ever Marry A Man Who Hated His Mother.

Love

Relationship

Marriage

I Didn't Write. I Just Wandered About.

Writing

Americans Did Not Acquire Their Fear Neurosis As The Result Of A Traumatic Experience - War Devasting Their Country, Pestilence Sweeping The Land, Famine Wiping Out Helpless Millions. Americans Had To Be Taught To Hate And Fear An Unseen Enemy. The Teachers Were Men In Official Positions, In Government, Men Whom Americans Normally Trust Without Question.

Country

Teacher

Fear

Freedom' Is The Most Expensive Possession There Is; It Has To Be Paid For With Loneliness.

Freedom

Loneliness

Possession

I Used To Write Letters To The Wounded In The Palace Hotel, And I Used To Drive A Station Wagon With Blood In Bottles To A Battalion Aid Station.

Writing

Blood

Bottles

You Have To Stop Living In Order To Write.

Writing

Order

Then Somebody Suggested I Should Write About The War, And I Said I Didn't Know Anything About The War. I Did Not Understand Anything About It. I Didn't See How I Could Write It

War

Writing

Should

After The Desperate Years Of Their Own War, After Six Years Of Repression Inside Spain And Six Years Of Horror In Exile, These People Remain Intact In Spirit. They Are Armed With A Transcendent Faith; They Have Never Won, And Yet They Have Never Accepted Defeat.

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A Broken Heart Is Such A Shabby Thing, Like Poverty And Failure And The Incurable Diseases Which Are Also Deforming. I Hate It And Am Ashamed Of It, And I Must Somehow Repair This Heart And Put It Back Into Its Normal Condition, As A Tough Somewhat Scarred But Operating Organ.

Broken Heart

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Disease

I Do Not See Myself As A Footnote To Someone Else's Life.

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People

Journalism

Joseph Mccarthy, The Junior Republican Senator From Wisconsin, Ruled America Like Devil King For Four Years. His Purges Were An American Mirror Image Of Stalin's Purges, An Unnoticed Similarity.

Kings

Mirrors

Years

Officialdom Is Hostile To Inquiring Outsiders.

Outsiders

Inquiring

Bureaucracy

War Happens To People, One By One. That Is Really All I Have To Say And It Seems To Me I Have Been Saying It Forever. Unless They Are Immediate Victims, The Majority Of Mankind Behaves As If War Was An Act Of God Which Could Not Be Prevented; Or They Behave As If War Elsewhere Was None Of Their Business. It Would Be A Bitter Cosmic Joke If We Destroy Ourselves Due To Atrophy Of The Imagination.

War

Imagination

People

The Private Conscience Is The Last And Only Protection Of The Civilized World.

World

Lasts

Protection

The Human Spirit Can Be Indomitable And It Is This Rare Quality That Is Not At All To Be Expected That Makes Survivors Of Us All, The Human Race In The Grand Scheme Of Things.

Race

Quality

Survivor

Furthermore, They Were Constantly Informed By All The Camp Authorities That They Had Been Abandoned By The World: They Were Beggars And Lucky To Receive The Daily Soup Of Starvation.

World

Soup

Lucky

[on The United States:] We Are A Wildly Energetic People In Our Pursuit Of Pleasure, Let Alone In Our Pursuit Of Money, And We Are Very Odd To Look At As We Go About Our Lives.

People

United States

Looks

We Lisp In Numbers, In The U.s. We Are Deluged By Ample, Often Mysterious Statistics. ... Like Many In This Country, I Have Come To Regard Statistics With Doubt And Merely As A Hint Of The Probable Shape Of Fact.

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Data

Numbers

Life Is Not Long At All, Never Long Enough, But Days Are Very Long Indeed.

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Enough

Travel Is Compost For The Mind

Mind

Compost

In The End, In England, When You Want To Find Out How People Are Feeling, You Always Go To The Pubs.

People

Feelings

Want

Dachau Has Been My Own Lifelong Point Of No Return. Between The Moment When I Walked Through The Gate Of That Prison, With Its Infamous Motto, 'arbeit Macht Frei,' And When I Walked Out At The End Of A Day That Had No Ordinary Scale Of Hours, I Was Changed, And How I Looked At The Human Condition, The World We Live In, Changed ... Years Of War Had Taught Me A Great Deal, But War Was Nothing Like Dachau. Compared To Dachau, War Was Clean.

War

Years

Holocaust

Stop Spying On The Lawful Citizenry. Democracy And Dossiers Go Ill Together. It Is All Right For God But All Wrong For The State To Keep Its Eye On Sparrows.

Eye

Rights

Democracy

Nothing Is Better For Self-esteem Than Survival.

Self Esteem

Self

Survival

I See Mysteries And Complications Wherever I Look, And I Have Never Met A Steadily Logical Person.

Creativity

Imagination

Innovation

All Politicians Are Bores And Liars And Fakes. I Talk To People.

Liars

People

Fake

The World's Fat Is Badly Divided.

World

Rich

Poor

Despite Official Drivel About Clean Bombs And Tactical Nuclear Weapons, Anyone Who Can Read A Newspaper Or Listen To A Radio Knows That Some Of Us Mortals Have The Power To Destroy The Human Race And Man's Home On Earth. We Need Not Even Make War; Only By Preparing, By Playing With Our New Weapons, We Poison The Air, The Water, The Soil Of Our Plants, Damage The Health Of The Living, And Weaken The Chances Of The Newborn.

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If I Practised Sex, Out Of Moral Conviction, That Was One Thing; But To Enjoy It... Seemed A Defeat.

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The Ends Never Justify The Means Because It Never Ends.

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Thousand Got Away To Other Countries; Thousands Returned To Spain Tempted By False Promises Of Kindness. By The Tens Of Thousands, These Spaniards Died Of Neglect In The Concentration Camps.

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I Found Out About The Spanish War Because I Was In Germany When It Began.

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The English Don't Go In For Imagination: Imagination Is Considered To Be Improper If Not Downright Alarmist.

Imagination

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But Now That The Guerrilla Fighting Is Over, The Spaniards Are Again Men Without A Country Or Families Or Homes Or Work, Though Everyone Appreciates Very Much What They Did.

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It Is Charming The Way Everyone In The South Says, 'come Back.' This Is The Regulation Farewell At Gas Stations, Soda Fountains, General Stores, Tourist Camps. 'come Back,' They Call, 'come Back.' Do They Feel Marooned In One Place, Lost, Needing To Believe Someone Will Return To Share Their Exile On The Similar Main Streets, In The Varied But Always New-looking Land?

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Land

I Tell You Loneliness Is The Thing To Master. Courage And Fear, Love, Death Are Only Parts Of It And Can Easily Be Ruled Afterwards. If I Make Myself Master My Own Loneliness There Will Be Peace Or Safety: And Perhaps These Are The Same.

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... People Miss A Great Deal By Being Sensible.

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There Were Ten Concentration Camps In France From 1939 On.

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People May Correctly Remember The Events Of Twenty Years Ago (a Remarkable Feat), But Who Remembers His Fears, His Disgusts, His Tone Of Voice? It Is Like Trying To Bring Back The Weather Of That Time.

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It Is Alleged That Half A Million Spanish Men, Women And Children Fled To France After The Franco Victory.

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If I Were A First Rate Writer, I Wouldn't Mind A Bit. What Does Depress Me Is This: It Is So Desperately Hard And So Obsessive And So Lonely To Write That, In Return For All This Work, One Would Like A Little Self Satisfaction. And That Is Never Going To Come, For The Simple Reason That I Do Not Deserve It. I Cannot Be A Good Enough Writer. You See? I Call It Grim. But The Future Looks Awfully Clear To Me.

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The English Are Very Proud Of Their Parliament, And Week In, Week Out, Century After Century, They Have Pretty Good Cause To Be.

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Perhaps These Men In The House Caucus Room [committee On Un-american Activities] Are Determined To Spread Silence: To Frighten Those Voices Which Will Shout No, And Ask Questions, Defend The Few, Attack Cruelty And Proclaim The Rights And Dignity Of Man. ... America Is Going To Look Very Strange To Americans And They Will Not Be At Home Here, For The Air Will Slowly Become Unbreathable To All Forms Of Life Except Sheep.

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Sheep

[on Paris:] I Do Not Know Any City So Beautiful And You Can Be Unhappy There And Notice Your Unhappiness Less, Having The City To Look At.

Beautiful

Cities

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I Daresay I Was The Worst Bed Partner In Five Continents.

Bed

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People Often Say, With Pride, 'i'm Not Interested In Politics.' They Might As Well Say, 'i'm Not Interested In My Standard Of Living, My Health, My Job, My Rights, My Freedoms, My Future Or Any Future.' ... If We Mean To Keep Any Control Over Our World And Lives, We Must Be Interested In Politics.

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I Feel Very Troubled In The Head And Heart.

Heart

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Citizenship Is A Tough Occupation Which Obliges The Citizen To Make His Own Informed Opinion And Stand By It.

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Public Opinion, Though Slow As Lava, In The End Forces Governments Towards More Sanity, More Justice. My Heroes And Heroines Are All Private Citizens.

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Once You Get A Tyranny, You Don't Easily Get Rid Of It. Much Better To Remember About Eternal Vigilance.

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Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.

2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.

2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.

2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.

3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.

3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.

3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.

4. Proper Usage of Quotes

4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.

4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.

4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

5. Common Mistakes to Avoid

5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.

5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.

5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.

6. Quotes in Different Contexts

6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.

6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.

6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.

7. Punctuation and Formatting

Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:

Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.

Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.

Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.

8. Ethical Considerations

Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes

Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.

Conclusion

Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.

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