“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.”

— Harriet Beecher Stowe , book Uncle Tom's Cabin

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

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Harriet Beecher Stowe 87

Abolitionist, author 1811–1896

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“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.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book 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.

“As long as rulers are above the law, citizens have the same type of freedom that slaves had on days when their masters chose not to beat them.”

James Bovard (1956) American journalist

From Attention Deficit Democracy (Palgrave, 2006) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigrams%20Attention%20Deficit%20Democracy.htm

“A person's shadow stood for his legacy, his impact on the world. Some people cast hardly any shadow at all. Some cast long, deep shadows that endured for centuries.”

Rick Riordan book The Serpent's Shadow

Source: The Serpent's Shadow

“Some of the beliefs and legends bequethed to us by Antquity are so universally and firmly established that we have become accustomed to consider them as being almost as ancient as humanity itself. Nevertheless we are tempted to inquire how far the fact that some of these beliefs and legends have so many features in common is due to chance, and wether the similarity between them may not point to the exestience of an ancient, totally unknown and unsuspected civilization of which all other traces have disappeared.”

Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) chemist and physicist from England

As quoted in Morning of the Magicians (1963) by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Berger, p. 181

“My restless spirit never could endure
To brood so long upon one luxury,
Unless it did, though fearfully, espy
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 854
Endymion (1818)

“The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

“My Master and my Lord!
I long to do some work, some work for Thee;
I long to bring some lowly gift of love
For all Thy love to me.”

Hetty Bowman (1838–1872)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 120.

“An excellent master is always better than an excellent law. Let your laws be ever so good, if the lawmakers are bad, all will come to nothing.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Heaven On Earth, 1654

“Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

Anarchism, What it Really Stands For (1910)
Anarchism, What it Really Stands For (1910)

“[About his legacy:] I'll be all right so long as it has been written on some corner of a human heart. On the heart, it doesn't matter how you spell it.”

Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American novelist, short story writer

Quoted by Ron Grossman, "Nelson Algren's Chicago" http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-nelson-algren-flashback-chicago-authors-perspec-0326-jm-20170324-story.html, The Chicago Tribune, March 25, 2017.
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Harriet Beecher Stowe 87

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