“I am gaining in health slowly, and am quite cheerful in view of my approaching end, — being fully persuaded that I am worth inconceivably more to hang than any other purpose.”
Letter to his brother Jeremiah https://archive.org/stream/lifeandlettersof00sanbrich/lifeandlettersof00sanbrich_djvu.txt (12 November 1859).
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John Brown (abolitionist) 14
American abolitionist 1800–1859Related quotes

“I am not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable.”
Source: Persuasion

“I am who I am.
A coincidence no less unthinkable
than any other.”

Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. IX).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: I can not express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself - but as my own being; so, don't talk of our separation again - it is impracticable.

Letter 19
Letters Written in Sweden (1796)
Context: Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.
Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Source: In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965 (1972), p. 61