native quotes

  • The deceased Gentlemanwas, weare informed, a native of Ashbourn, Derbyshire, at which place he was born in theYear of Grace, 217, and was consequently in the 1643rd year of his age. For some months the patriotic Old Man had been suffering from injuries sustained in his native town, so far back as Shrovetide in last year; he was at once removed (byappeal) to London, where he lingered in suspense till the law of death put its icy hand upon him, and claimed as another trophy to magisterial interference one who had long lived in the hearts of the people.

    -Anonymous
      'Death of the Right Honourable Game Football', as published in a court circular. There had been recent attempts in the courts to ban the riotous custom of 'Shrovetide football' pursued at  Ashbourne, Derbyshire, and other villages.

  • Le colonialisme ne se satisfait pas d'enserrer le peuple dans ses mailles, de vider le cerveau colonise   de toute forme et de tout contenu. Par une sorte de perversion de la logique, il s'oriente vers le passe   du peuple opprime  , le distort, le de  figure, l'ane  antit. Colonialismisnot satisfiedmerely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native's brain of all form and content. Bya kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.

    - Frantz Omar Fanon
    Les Damne  s de la terre ( The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance Farrington,1965), ch.4,'On National Culture'.

  • Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Letter to Sir  Joshua Reynolds,17  Jul. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

  • If you aren't native to a place you have an excellent chance of becoming a gentleman in it.

    - George Eric Lamming
      In the Castle of My Skin, ch.14.

  • When old settlers say 'One has to understand the country,' what they mean is,'You have to get used to our ideas about the native.' Theyare saying, in effect,'Learn our ideas, or otherwise get out; we don't want you.'

    - Doris May ne  e Tayler Lessing
      The Grass Is Singing, ch.1.

  • When a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it ishis chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.

    - Doris May ne  e Tayler Lessing
      The Grass Is Singing, ch.8.

  • See how the Orient dew, Shed from the bosom of the morn Into the blowing roses, Yet careless of its mansion new; For the clear region where 'twas born Round in its self encloses: And in its little globes extent, Frames as it can its native element.

    - Andrew Marvell
    c.1650^1652  'On a Drop of Dew' (published1681).

  • My native heath is brown beneath, My native waters blue; But crimson red o'er both shall spread, Ere I am false to you, Dear land! Ere I am false to you.

    -John pseudonym Sliabh Cuilinn O'Hagan
      'Dear Land' in The Spirit of the Nation.

  • Theactionoftheplay takesplace onanisland intheWest Indies as not yet self-determined by White Mariners. The form of native government is, for the time being, an Empire.

    - Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
      The Emperor Jones, scene direction.

  • The status of 'native' is a nervous condition introduced and maintained by the settler among colonized people with their consent.

    -Jean-Paul Sartre
      Preface to Franz Fanon Les Damne  s de la terre (The Wretched of theEarth,1967, translated by Constance Farrington). Tsitsi Dangarembga uses this sentence to supply both epigraph and title of her1988 novel Nervous Conditions.

  • Speak out, sir, and do not Maister or Campbell memy foot is on my native heath, and my name is MacGregor!

    - Sir Walter Scott
      Rob Roy to Francis Osbaldistone. Rob Roy, ch.34.

  • Native always means people who belong somewhere else, becausethey had once belonged somewhere.That shows that the white race does not really think they belong anywhere because they think of everybody else as native.

    - Gertrude Stein
      Everybody's Autobiography, ch.1.

  • These Mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to beg Sustenance for their helpless Infants; who, as they grow up either turnThieves for want of Work; or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain; or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

    -Jonathan Swift
      A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Learn more about native

link/cite print suggestion box