Famous Quotes & Sayings

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 32 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Harriet Ann Jacobs.

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Famous Quotes By Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1222600

When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1699976

For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 215638

I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

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Always it gave me a pang that my children had no lawful claim to a name. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 2213129

But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

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The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 2158489

DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 242932

Dr. Flint had sworn that he would make me suffer, to my last day, for this new crime against him, as he called it; and as long as he had me in his power he kept his word. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

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Lives that flash in sunshine, and lives that are born in tears, receive their hue from circumstances. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1537753

When I was six years old, my mother died; and then, for the first time, I learned, by the talk around me, that I was a slave. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1062503

The slave child had no thought for the morrow; but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 963211

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 2055272

But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1736544

There must be sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1700485

The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 128918

Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1616505

There are no bonds so strong as those which are formed by suffering together — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1600241

Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1573773

Death is better than slavery. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 2257992

The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1387486

Could you have seen that mother clinging to her child, when they fastened the irons upon his wrists; could you have heard her heart-rending groans, and seen her bloodshot eyes wander wildly from face to face, vainly pleading for mercy; could you have witnessed that scene as I saw it, you would exclaim, Slavery is damnable! — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1385794

If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1235680

No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1065311

The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 1042071

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 967402

If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 916590

When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 794871

I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 556710

When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 417933

I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 329557

Notwithstanding my grandmother's long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes 244414

I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away. — Harriet Ann Jacobs