Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes & Sayings

After all, let a man take what pains he may to hush it down, a human soul is an awful ghostly, unquiet possession, for a bad man to have. Who knows the metes and bounds of it? Who knows all it's awful perhapses, -those shudderings and temblings, which it can no more live down than it can outlive its own eternity! What a fool is he who locks his door to keep out spirits, who has in his own bosom a spirit he dares not meet alone, -whose voice, smothered far down, and piled over with mountains of earthiness, is yet like the forewarning trumpet of doom! — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

If women want any rights they had better take them, and say nothing about it. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

What a situation, now, for a patriotic senator, that had been all the week before spurring up the legislature of his native state to pass more stringent resolutions against escaping fugitives, their harborers and abettors! — Harriet Beecher Stowe

When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean,
And billows wild contend with angry roar,
'Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion,
That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore.
Far, far beneath, the noise of tempest dieth,
And silver waves chime ever peacefully,
And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth,
Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.
So to the heart that knows Thy love, O Purest,
There is a temple sacred evermore,
And all the babble of life's angry voices
Dies in hushed silence at its peaceful door.
Far, far away, the roar of passion dieth,
And loving thoughts rise calm and peacefully,
And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth,
Disturbs the soul that dwells, O Lord, in Thee. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

It lies around us like a cloud- A world we do not see; Yet the sweet closing of an eye May bring us there to be. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

There are griefs which grow with years. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

General rules will bear hard on particular cases. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people's
glass houses, but I never mean to put up one for them to stone. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

But who, sir, makes the trader? Who is most to blame? The enlightened, cultivated, intelligent man, who supports the system of which the trader is the inevitable result, or the poor trader himself? You make the public statement that calls for his trade, that debauches and depraves him, till he feels no shame in it; and in what are you better than he? — Harriet Beecher Stowe

To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

There is no independence and pertinacity of opinion like that of these seemingly soft, quiet creatures, whom it is so easy to silence, and so difficult to convince. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Get your evidences of grace by pressing forward to the mark, and not by groping with a lantern after the boundary lines. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The ship, built on one element, but designed to have its life in another, seemed an image of the soul, formed and fashioned with many a weary hammer-stroke in this life, but finding its true element only when it sails out into the ocean of eternity. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Cathedrals do not seem to me to have been built. They seem, rather, stupendous growths of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

My master! and who made him my master? That's what I think of - what right has he to me? I'm a man as much as he is. I'm a better man than he is. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Some jokes are less agreeable than others — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

He says that there can be no high civilization without enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real. There must, he says, be a lower class, given up to physical toil and confined to an animal nature; and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and wealth for a more expanded intelligence and improvement, and becomes the directing soul of the lower. So he reasons, because, as I said, he is born an aristocrat; - so I don't believe, because I was born a democrat. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

This is God's curse on slavery! - a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing! - a curse to the master and a curse to the slave! I was a fool to think I could make anything good out of such a deadly evil. It is a sin to hold a slave under laws like ours, - I always felt it was, - I always thought so when I was a girl, - I thought so still more after I joined the church; but I thought I could gild it over, - I thought, by kindness, and care, and instruction, I could make the condition of mine better than freedom - fool that I was! — Harriet Beecher Stowe

He had been able to repress every disrespectful word; but the flashing eye, the gloomy and troubled brow, were part of a natural language that could not be repressed,
indubitable signs, which showed too plainly that the man could not become a thing. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I 'spect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

On the contrary, an airy and innocent playfulness seemed to flicker like the shadow of summer leaves over her childish face, and around her buoyant figure. She was always in motion, always with a half-smile on her rosy mouth, flying hither and thither, with an undulating and cloud-like tread, singing to herself as she moved, as in a happy dream. Her father and female guardian were incessantly busy in pursuit of her, but, when caught, she melted from them again like a summer cloud; and as no word of chiding or reproof ever fell on her ear for whatever she chose to do, she pursued her own way all over the boat. Always dressed in white, she seemed to move like a shadow through all sorts of places, without contracting spot or stain; and there was not a corner or nook, above or below, where those fairy footsteps had not glided, and that visionary, golden head, with its deep blue eyes, fleeted along. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The underlying foundation of life in New England was one of profound, unutterable, and therefore unuttered, melancholy, which regarded human existence itself as a ghastly risk, and, in the case of the vast majority of human beings, an inconceivable misfortune. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Money is a great help everywhere; - can't have too much, if you get it honestly. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

In lecturing on cookery, as on housebuilding, I divide the subject into, not four, but five grand elements: first, Bread; second,Butter; third, Meat; fourth, Vegetables; and fifth, Tea
by which I mean, generically, all sorts of warm, comfortable drinks served out in teacups, whether they be called tea, coffee, chocolate, broma, or what not. I affirm that, if these five departments are all perfect, the great ends of domestic cookery are answered, so far as the comfort and well-being of life are concerned. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The country is almost ruined with pious white people: such pious politicians as we have just before elections, such pious goings on in all departments of church and state, that a fellow does not know who'll cheat him next. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Heavy gold watch-chain, with a bundle of seals of portentous size, and a great variety of colors, attached to it, - which, in the ardor of conversation, he was in the habit of flourishing and jingling with evident satisfaction. His conversation was in free and easy defiance of — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The hand of benevolence is everywhere stretched out, searching into abuses, righting wrongs, alleviating distresses, and bringing to the knowledge and sympathies of the world the lowly, the oppressed, and the forgotten. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Treat 'em like dogs, and you'll have dogs' works and dogs' actions. Treat 'em like men, and you'll have men's works. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Lord gives good many things twice over; but he don't give ye a mother but once. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

All places where women are excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

It is always our treasure that the lightning strikes. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Oh my Eva, whose little hour on earth did so much good ... what account have I to give for my long years? — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life's undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

It is generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

You would think no harm in a child's caressing a large dog, even if he was black; but a creature that can think, and reason, and feel, and is immortal, you shudder at; confess it, cousin. I know the feeling among some of you northerners well enough. Not that there is a particle of virtue in our not having it; but custom with us does what Christianity ought to do, - obliterates the feeling of personal prejudice. I have often noticed, in my travels north, how much stronger this was with you than with us. You loathe them as you would a snake or a toad, yet you are indignant at their wrongs. You would not have them abused; but you don't want to have anything to do with them yourselves. You would send them to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary or two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously. Isn't that it?" "Well, cousin," said Miss Ophelia, thoughtfully, "there may be some truth in this. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The beautiful must ever rest in the arms of the sublime. The gentle needs the strong to sustain it, as much as the rock-flowers need rocks to grow on, or the ivy the rugged wall which it embraces. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you until it seems that you cannot hold on for a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time when the tide will turn. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Love is very beautiful, but very, very sad. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Her husband's suffering and dangers, and the danger of her child, all blended in her mind, with a confused and stunning sense of the risk she was running, in leaving the only home she had ever known, and cutting loose from the protection of a friend whom she loved and revered. Then there was the parting from every familiar object, - the place where she had grown up, the trees under which she had played, the groves where she had walked many an evening in happier days, by the side of her young husband, - everything, as it lay in the clear, frosty starlight, seemed to speak reproachfully to her, and ask her whither could she go from a home like that? — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Let my soul calm itself, O Christ, in Thee. This is true — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Fanaticism is governed by imagination rather than judgment. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

A ship is a beauty and a mystery wherever we see it ... — Harriet Beecher Stowe

And though it be not so in the physical, yet in moral science that which cannot be understood is not always profitless. For the soul awakes, a trembling stranger, between two dim eternities, - the eternal past, the eternal future. The light shines only on a small space around her; therefore, she needs must yearn towards the unknown; and the voices and shadowy movings which come to her from out the cloudy pillar of inspiration have each one echoes and answers in her own expecting nature. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Think of your freedom, every time you see UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; and let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to follow in his steps, and be honest and faithful and Christian as he was." CHAPTER — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Negro is an exotic of the most gorgeous and superb countries of the world, and he has deep in his heart a passion for all that is splendid, rich and fanciful. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere matter, for the most part, of latitude and longitude, and geographical position, acting with natural temperament. The greater part is nothing but an accident. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

A woman's health is her capital. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which endurance is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

It is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Once in an age God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false-imagining, an unreal character, but looking through the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature,
loves, not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Women are the true modelers of social order. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Care and labor are as much correlated to human existence as shadow is to light ... — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Look at the high and the low, all the world over, and it's the same story, - the lower class used up, body, soul and spirit, for the good of the upper. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Humankind above all is lazy. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

There are in this world two kinds of natures, - those that have wings, and those that have feet, - the winged and the walking spirits. The walking are the logicians; the winged are the instinctive and poetic. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The shape of her head and the turn of her neck and bust were peculiarly noble, and the long golden-brown hair that floated like a cloud around it, the deep spiritual gravity of her violet blue eyes, shaded by heavy fringes of golden brown — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I tell you now, Andy," said Sam, with awful superiority, "don't yer be a talkin' 'bout what yer don't know nothin' on; boys like you, Andy, means well, but they can't be spected to collusitate the great principles of action."
Andy looked rebuked, particularly by the hard word collusitate, which most of the youngerly members of the company seemed to consider as a settler in the case, while Sam proceeded. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

His conversation was in free and easy defiance of Murray's Grammar, and was garnished at convenient intervals with various profane expressions, which not even the desire to be graphic in our account shall induce us to transcribe. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Intemperance in eating is one of the most fruitful of all causes of disease and death. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Whipping and abuse are like laudanum: you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Eliza," said George, "people that have friends, and houses, and lands, and money, and all those things, can't love as we do, who have nothing but each other ... And your loving me, - why, it was almost like raising one from the dead! I've been a new man ever since! And now, Eliza, I'll give my last drop of blood, but they shall not take you from me. Whoever gets you must walk over my dead body. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

George was, in truth, one of the sort who evidently have made some mistake in coming into this world at all, as their internal furniture is in no way suited to its general courses and currents. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The pain of discipline is short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

But, of old, there was One whose suffering changed an instrument of torture, degradation and shame, into a symbol of glory, honor, and immortal life; and, where His spirit is, neither degrading stripes, nor blood, nor insults, can make the Christian's last struggle less than glorious. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Women are the real architects of society. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I no more thought of style or literary excellence than the mother who rushes into the street and cries for help to save her children from a burning house, thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the elocutionist. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Mountains are nature's testimonials of anguish. They are the sharp cry of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing verdureless and stern because exist they must. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

No matter how kind her mistress is, - no matter how much she loves her home; beg her not to go back, - for slavery always ends in misery. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Many a humble soul will be amazed to find that the seed it sowed in weakness, in the dust of daily life, has blossomed into immortal flowers under the eye of the Lord. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Greek is the morning land of languages, and has the freshness of early dew in it which will never exhale. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Now is all the time I have anything to do with, said Miss Ophelia. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P - , in Kentucky. There were no servants present, and the gentlemen, with chairs closely approaching, seemed to be discussing some subject with great earnestness. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

A cook she certainly was, in the very bone and centre of her soul. Not a ... turkey ... in the barn-yard but looked grave when they saw her approaching, and seemed evidently to be reflecting on their latter end; and certain it was that she was always meditating on trussing, stuffing and roasting, to a degree that was calculated to inspire terror in any reflecting fowl living. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

That's right; put on the steam, fasten down the escape-valve, and sit on it, and see there you'll land. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Sweet souls around us watch us still, press nearer to our side; Into our thoughts, into our prayers, with gentle helpings glide. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

In the gates of eternity, the black hand and the white hold each other with an equal clasp. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

One of the greatest reforms that could be, in these reforming days ... would be to have women architects. The mischief with the houses built to rent is that they are all male contrivances. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Tom opened his eyes, and looked upon his master. "Ye poor miserable critter!" he said, "there ain't no more ye can do! I forgive ye, with all my soul!" and he fainted entirely away. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The delicacy that respects a friend's silence is one of the charms of life. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Midnight,
strange mystic hour,
when the veil between the frail present and the eternal future grows thin. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The number of those men who know how to use wholly irresponsible power humanely and generously is small. Everybody knows this, and the slave knows it best of all. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The same quickness which makes a mind buoyant in gladness often makes it gentlest and most sympathetic in sorrow. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

If I am to write, I must have a room to myself, which shall be my room. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Human nature is above all things lazy. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

There is more done with pens than with swords. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I's wicked I is. I's mighty wicked; anyhow I can't help it. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

How then shall a Christian bear fruit? By efforts and struggles to obtain that which is freely given? ... No: there must be a full concentration of the thoughts and affections on Christ; a complete surrender of the whole being to Him; a constant looking to Him for grace. — Harriet Beecher Stowe