Harriet Beecher Stowe citations (87 citations, Page 3)

And the trader leaned back in his chair, and folded his arm, with an air of virtuous decision, apparently considering himself a second Wilberforce.
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 1 In Which the Reader Is Introduced to a Man of Humanity

“Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?
The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.
But to live, — to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling gradually smothered, — this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after hour, — this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe livre Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 38 The Victory

“I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe livre Uncle Tom's Cabin

Introduction to an 1879 edition.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

“Everyone confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances drive them to do.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe

"The Lady Who Does Her Own Work" in The Atlantic Monthly (1864).

“True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life; and homely services rendered for love's sake have in them a poetry that is immortal.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe

Part 2, Ch. 4.
Household Papers and Stories (1864)

“To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe

Source: Household Papers and Stories (1864), Ch. 10.

“That ignorant confidence in one's self and one's future, which comes in life's first dawn, has a sort of mournful charm in experienced eyes, who know how much it all amounts to.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Pearl of Orr's Island : A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862).

“Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe livre Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 7.

“Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow — the shadow of law. So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master — so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil — so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe livre Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 1.

“The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe

Attributed

“Women are the real architects of society.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe

Source: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad (2010). Northern women development. [Nigeria]. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657.

“Life passes, with us all, a day at a time; so it passed with our friend Tom, till two years were gone. Though parted from all his soul held dear, and though often yearning for what lay beyond, still was he never positively and consciously miserable; for, so well is the harp of human feeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can wholly mar its harmony; and, on looking back to seasons which in review appear to us as those of deprivation and trial, we can remember that each hour, as it glided, brought its diversions and alleviations, so that, though not happy wholly, we were not, either, wholly miserable.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe livre Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 22 "The Grass Withereth — the Flower Fadeth".

“To fill up Liberia with an ignorant, inexperienced, half-barbarized race, just escaped from the chains of slavery, would be only to prolong, for ages, the period of struggle and conflict which attends the inception of new enterprises.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe livre Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Concluding Remarks

“Do you say that the people of the free state have nothing to do with it, and can do nothing? Would to God this were true! But it is not true. The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South, in that they have not the apology of education or custom.
If the mothers of the free states had all felt as they should, in times past, the sons of the free states would not have been the holders, and, proverbially, the hardest masters of slaves; the sons of the free states would not have connived at the extension of slavery, in our national body; the sons of the free states would not, as they do, trade the souls and bodies of men as an equivalent to money, in their mercantile dealings. There are multitudes of slaves temporarily owned, and sold again, by merchants in northern cities; and shall the whole guilt or obloquy of slavery fall only on the South?
Northern men, northern mothers, northern Christians, have something more to do than denounce their brethren at the South; they have to look to the evil among themselves.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe livre Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Concluding Remarks

“People have wondered where the seat of original sin is; I think it 's in the stomach. A man eats too much and neglects exercise, and the Devil has him all his own way, and the little imps, with their long black fingers, play on his nerves like a piano. Never overwork either body or mind, boys. All the work that a man can do that can be rested by one night's sleep is good for him, but fatigue that goes into the next day is always bad.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe livre Old Town Folks

Old Town Folks (1869) Ch. 39 Last Days In Cloud-Land

“The longest day must have its close — the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe livre Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 40 The Martyr

“Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow — the shadow of law.”

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Harriet Beecher Stowe livre Uncle Tom's Cabin

So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master — so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil — so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 1.