Inspirational Quotes by David Livingstone

“but the Gospels reveal Jesus, the manifestation of the blessed God over all as minute in His care of all. He exercises a vigilance more constant, complete, and comprehensive, every hour and every minute, over each of His people than their utmost selflove could ever attain. His tender love is more exquisite than a mother's heart can feel.”

“Still passing through the same desolate country, we see that he makes a note on the forsaken fields and the watch-towers in them. Cucumbers are cultivated in large quantities by the natives of Inner Africa, and the reader will no doubt call to mind the simile adopted by Isaiah some 2500 years ago, as he pictured the coming desolation of Zion, likening her to a "lodge in a garden of cucumbers.”

“9th August, 1872.—I do most devoutly thank the Lord for His goodness in bringing my men near to this. Three came to-day, and how thankful I am I cannot express. It is well—the men who went with Mr. Stanley came again to me. "Bless the Lord, my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name." Amen.”

“Several market people came to salute, who knew that we had no hand in the massacre, as we are a different people from the Arabs. In going and coming they must have a march of 25 miles with loads so heavy no slave would carry them. They speak of us as "good:" the anthropologists think that to be spoken of as wicked is better. Ezekiel says that the Most High put His comeliness upon Jerusalem: if He does not impart of His goodness to me I shall never be good: if He does not put of His comeliness on me I shall never be comely in soul, but be like these Arabs in whom Satan has full sway—the god of this world having blinded their eyes.”

“They say, "You must give much, because you are a great man: Mokamba will say so"—though Mokamba knows nothing about me! It is uncertain whether I can get down through by Loanda, and great risk would be run in going to those who cut off the party of Moenegheré, so I have come to the conclusion that it will be better for me to go to Manyuema about a fortnight hence, and, if possible, trace down the western arm of the Nile to the north—if this arm is indeed that of the Nile, and not of the Congo. Nobody here knows anything about it, or, indeed, about the eastern or Tanganyika line either; they all confess that they have but one question in their minds in going anywhere, they ask for ivory and for nothing else, and each trip ends as a foray. Moenegher”

“The Arab progeny here have scanty beards, and many grow to a very great height—tall, gaunt savages; while the Muscatees have prominent nose-bridges, good beards, and are polite and hospitable. I wish I had some of the assurance possessed by others, but I am oppressed with the apprehension that after all it may turn out that I have been following the Congo; and who would risk being put into a cannibal pot, and converted into black man for it?”

“I cannot find anyone who knows where the outflow of the unvisited Lake S.W. of this goes; some think that it goes to the Western Ocean, or, I should say, the Congo. Mohamad Bogharib goes in a month to Manyuema, but if matters turn out as I wish, I may explore this Tanganyika line first. One”

“25th March, 1873.—Nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair. I encourage myself in the Lord my God, and go forward.”

“They had slept on the ridge after we saw them, and next morning, in sheer wantonness, fired their lodgings,—their slaves had evidently carried the fire along from their lodgings, and set fire to houses of villages in their route as a sort of horrid Moslem Nigger joke; it was done only because they could do it without danger of punishment: it was such fun to make the Mashensé, as they call all natives, houseless. Men are worse than beasts of prey, if indeed it is lawful to call Zanzibar slaves men. It is monstrous injustice to compare free Africans living under their own chiefs and laws, and cultivating their own free lands, with what slaves afterwards become at Zanzibar and elsewhere.”

“The ten men sent are all slaves of the Banians, who are English subjects, and they come with a lie in their mouth: they will not help me, and swear that the Consul told them not to go forward, but to force me back, and they spread the tale all over the country that a certain letter has been sent to me with orders to return forthwith. They swore so positively that I actually looked again at Dr. Kirk's letter to see if his orders had been rightly understood by me. But”

“Finished a letter for the New York Herald, trying to enlist American zeal to stop the East Coast slave-trade: I pray for a blessing on it from the All-Gracious. [Through a coincidence a singular interest attaches to this entry. The concluding words of the letter he refers to are as follows:—] "All I can add in my loneliness is, may Heaven's rich blessing come down on everyone, American, English, or Turk, who will help to heal the open sore of the world.”

“23rd May, 1872.—There seems but little prospect of Christianity spreading by ordinary means among Mohamadans. Their pride is a great obstacle, and is very industriously nurtured by its votaries. No new invention or increase of power on the part of Christians seems to disturb the self-complacent belief that ultimately all power and dominion in this world will fall into the hands of Moslems. Mohamad”

“[It was felt that nothing could more palpably represent the man, and this quotation has consequently been inscribed upon the tablet erected to his memory near his grave in Westminster Abbey. It was noticed some time after selecting it that Livingstone wrote these words exactly one year before his death, which, as we shall see, took place on the 1st May, 1873.]”

“This Hassani declared to me that he would not begin hostilities, but he began nothing else; the prospect of getting slaves overpowers all else, and blood flows in horrid streams. The Lord look on it! Hassani will have some tale to tell Mohamad Bogharib.”

“[The note made on the following day is written with a feeble hand, and scarce one pencilled word tallies with its neighbour in form or distinctness—in fact, it is seen at a glance what exertion it cost him to write at all. He says no more than "Ill" in one place, but this is the evident explanation; yet with the same painstaking determination of old, the three rivers which they crossed have their names recorded, and the hours of marching and the direction are all entered in his pocket book.] 13th December, 1872.—Westward about by south, and crossed a river, Mokobwé, thirty-five yards. Ill, and after going S.W. camped in a deserted village, S.W. travelling five hours. River”

“19th May, 1869.—The emancipation of our West-Indian slaves was the work of but a small number of the people of England—the philanthropists and all the more advanced thinkers of the age. Numerically they were a very small minority of the population, and powerful only from the superior abilities of the leading men, and from having the right, the true, and just on their side. Of the rest of the population an immense number were the indifferent, who had no sympathies to spare for any beyond their own fireside circles. In the course of time sensation writers came up on the surface of society, and by way of originality they condemned almost every measure and person of the past. "Emancipation was a mistake;" and these fast writers drew along with them a large body, who would fain be slaveholders themselves. We must never lose sight of the fact that though the majority perhaps are on the side of freedom, large numbers of Englishmen are not slaveholders only because the law forbids the practice. In this proclivity we see a great part of the reason of the frantic sympathy of thousands with the rebels in the great Black war in America. It is true that we do sympathize with brave men, though we may not approve of the objects for which they fight. We admired Stonewall Jackson as a modern type of Cromwell's Ironsides; and we praised Lee for his generalship, which, after all, was chiefly conspicuous by the absence of commanding abilities in his opponents, but, unquestionably, there existed besides an eager desire that slaveocracy might prosper, and the Negro go to the wall. The”

“1871.—Falsehood seems ingrained in their constitutions: no wonder that in all this region they have never tried to propagate Islamism; the natives soon learn to hate them, and slaving, as carried on by the Kilwans and Ujijians, is so bloody, as to prove an effectual barrier against proselytism.”

“This is a den of the worst kind of slave-traders; those whom I met in Urungu and Itawa were gentlemen slavers: the Ujiji slavers, like the Kilwa and Portuguese, are the vilest of the vile. It is not a trade, but a system of consecutive murders; they go to plunder and kidnap, and every trading trip is nothing but a foray. Moen”

“A headman who went with us plagued another chief to give me a goat; I refused to take what was not given willingly, but the slaves secured it; and I threatened our companion, Kama, with dismissal from our party if he became a tool in slave hands. The arum is common.”

“We must follow Susi's troop through a not altogether eventless journey to the sea. Some days afterwards, as they wended their way through a rocky place, a little girl in their train, named Losi, met her death in a shocking way. It appears that the poor child was carrying a water-jar on her head in the file of people, when an enormous snake dashed across the path, deliberately struck her in the thigh, and made for a hole in the jungle close at hand. This work of a moment was sufficient, for the poor girl fell mortally wounded. She”