The man who has thoroughly embraced the principles of justice, love, and liberty, like the preacher of Christianity, is less anxious to reproach the world of its sins, than to win it to repentance. His great work on earth is to exemplify, and to illustrate, and to engraft those principles on the living and practical understandings of all men within the reach of his influence. This is his work; long or short his years, many or few his adherents, powerful or weak his instrumentalities, through good report or bad report, this is his work. It is to snatch from the bosom of nature the latent facts of each individual man’s experience, and with a steady hand to hold them up fresh and glowing, enforcing, with all his power, their acknowledgment and practical adoption.
The Anti-Slavery Movement, in Speeches And Writings of Frederick Douglass 327 (Y. Taylor and P. Foner eds. 1999).
Wise words, which we all, myself included, fail too often to live up to.
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