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Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
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“For though I'm black, yet am I also fair / and in my mortal form, Thine doth appear.”
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“Rose-colored spectacles the hopeful wear ...”
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“The arrogance of men, indeed, / comes full equipped with evil, / in promise and insistency, / the world, the flesh, the Devil.”
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“Stupid men, who accuse / women without reason: / you've never noticed, I suppose, / it's you who taught the lesson. / If with an upsurge of desire / you storm her disapproval, / why would you have her be so good, / inciting her to evil? / You wear her last defenses down, / and then you gravely tell her / she's frivolous, though it was you / who caused harm to befall her.”
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“... I was not yet three years old when my mother determined to send one of my elder sisters to learn to read at a school for girls we call the Amigas. Affection, and mischief, caused me to follow her, and when I observed how she was being taught her lessons I was so inflamed with the desire to know how to read, that deceiving — for so I knew it to be — the mistress, I told her that my mother had meant for me to have lessons too. ... I learned so quickly that before my mother knew of it I could already read ...”
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“... privation is the source of appetite.”
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“... men, who merely for being men believe they are wise ...”
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“In loss itself / I find assuagement: / having lost the treasure, / I've nothing to fear.”
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“That you're a woman far away is no hindrance to my love: for the soul, as you well know, distance and sex don't count.”
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Mexican poet, scholar, playwright, nun
(1651 - 1595)
Born: Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana.