Meridel Le Sueur Quotes

• The body repeats the landscape. They are the source of each other and create each other.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Body, Earth, Landscape

  Meridel Le Sueur, Elaine Hedges (1990). “Ripening: Selected Work”, p.39, Feminist Press at CUNY

  51 Copy quote

• It was the bumble bee and the butterfly who survived, not the dinosaur.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Butterfly, Survival, Dinosaurs

  Meridel Le Sueur, Elaine Hedges (1990). “Ripening: Selected Work”, p.266, Feminist Press at CUNY

  20 Copy quote

• Linear thinking is patriarchal.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Thinking, Linear

  12 Copy quote

• The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Lying, People, Oppression

  Meridel Le Sueur, Elaine Hedges (1990). “Ripening: Selected Work”, p.66, Feminist Press at CUNY

  13 Copy quote

• Hard times ain't quit and we ain't quit.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Inspirational, Hard Times, Quitting

  10 Copy quote

• These are the stories that never, never die, that are carried like seed into a new country, are told to you and me and make in us new and lasting strengths.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Country, Stories, Lasting

  11 Copy quote

• Lie in the sun with the child in your flesh shining like a jewel. Dream and sing, pagan, wise in your vitals. Stand still like a fat budding tree, like a stalk of corn athrob and aglisten in the heat. Lie like a mare panting with the dancing feet of colts against her sides. Sleep at night as the spring earth. Walk heavily as a wheat stalk at its full time bending towards the earth waiting for the reaper. Let your life swell downward so you become like a vase, a vessel. Let the unknown child knock and knock against you and rise like a dolphin within.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Wise, Dream, Children

  18 Copy quote

• I am luminous with age.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Age, Luminous

  Meridel Le Sueur (1970). “Corn Village: A Selection”

  13 Copy quote

• Human history is work history. The heroes of the people are work heroes.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Hero, People, History

  MERIDEL LE SUEUR (1945). “NORHT STAR COUNTRY”

  8 Copy quote

• Suddenly many movements are going on within me, many things are happening, there is an almost unbearable sense of sprouting, of bursting encasements, of moving kernels, expanding flesh.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Pregnancy, Moving, Movement

  Meridel Le Sueur, Elaine Hedges (1990). “Ripening: Selected Work”, p.129, Feminist Press at CUNY

  10 Copy quote

• Memory in America suffers amnesia.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Memories, America, Suffering

  Meridel Le Sueur (1955). “Crusaders: the radical legacy of Marian and Arthur Le Sueur”, Minnesota Historical Society Pr

  7 Copy quote

• Writing is primarily a sensuous and creative expression of life.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Writing, Expression, Creative

  Meridel Le Sueur (1990). “Harvest song: collected essays and stories”, West End Pr

  7 Copy quote

• What happens in a strike happens not to one person alone.... It is a crisis with meaning and potency for all and prophetic of a future. The elements in crisis are the same, there is a fermentation that is identical. The elements are these: a body of men, women and children, hungry; an organization of feudal employers out to break the back of unionization; and the government Labor Board sent to "negotiate" between this hunger and this greed.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Children, Men, Organization

  Meridel Le Sueur (1990). “Harvest song: collected essays and stories”, West End Pr

  8 Copy quote

• It's not the suffering of birth, death, love that the young reject, but the suffering of endless labor without dream, eating the spare bread in bitterness, being a slave without the security of a slave.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Dream, Suffering, Bread

  Meridel Le Sueur, Elaine Hedges (1990). “Ripening: Selected Work”, p.143, Feminist Press at CUNY

  10 Copy quote

• Pears cannot ripen alone. So we ripened together.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Work, Together, Pears

  Meridel Le Sueur, Elaine Hedges (1990). “Ripening: Selected Work”, p.290, Feminist Press at CUNY

  52 Copy quote

• They never die, who have the future in them.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Motivation, Dies

  10 Copy quote

• No art can develop until it penetrates deeply into the life of the people.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Art, People, Penetrate

  Meridel Le Sueur, Elaine Hedges (1990). “Ripening: Selected Work”, p.239, Feminist Press at CUNY

  4 Copy quote

• You can tell by looking at most people that the world remains a stone to them and a closed door.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Ignorance, Doors, People

  Meridel Le Sueur, Elaine Hedges (1990). “Ripening: Selected Work”, p.129, Feminist Press at CUNY

  8 Copy quote

• Each generation must go further than the last or what's the use in it?

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Generations, Use, Lasts

  8 Copy quote

• The people always know that some of the grain will be good, some of the crop will be saved, some will return and bear the strength of the kernel, that from the bloodiest year some survive to outfox the frost.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Years, People, Frost

  Neala Schleuning, Meridel Le Sueur (1983). “America, song we sang without knowing: the life and ideas of Meridel LeSueur”, Don Olson Distribution

  7 Copy quote

• Money is only money, beans tonight and steak tomorrow. So long as you can look yourself in the eye.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Money, Eye, Long

  Meridel Le Sueur (1955). “Crusaders: the radical legacy of Marian and Arthur Le Sueur”, Minnesota Historical Society Pr

  10 Copy quote

• A good civilization gives the greatest possible scope to the common passions and makes them intelligible among the great number of people.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Passion, Civilization, Numbers

  Meridel Le Sueur (1990). “Harvest song: collected essays and stories”, West End Pr

  9 Copy quote

• An abyss seems to have opened between the intellectual cosmopolites of culture and the people, hungry for word and meaning.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  People, Intellectual, Culture

  Meridel Le Sueur, Elaine Hedges (1990). “Ripening: Selected Work”, p.231, Feminist Press at CUNY

  4 Copy quote

• To be bound by hungers is a beautiful thing but to be bound by physical hungers only is too low a state for man.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Beautiful, Men, Hunger

  Meridel Le Sueur (1990). “Harvest song: collected essays and stories”, West End Pr

  4 Copy quote

• Literature must spring from the deep and submerged humus of our life.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Spring, Literature, Our Lives

  Meridel Le Sueur, Elaine Hedges (1990). “Ripening: Selected Work”, p.31, Feminist Press at CUNY

  6 Copy quote

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