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Harriet Beecher Stowe

59 quotes

“What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Cathedral" in The Atlantic Monthly (1846).
“I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother I was oppressed and broken-hearted, with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity — because as a lover of my country I trembled at the coming day of wrath. It is no merit in the sorrowful that they weep, or to the oppressed and smothering that they gasp and struggle, not to me, that I must speak for the oppressed — who cannot speak for themselves.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Uncle Tom's Cabin in a letter to Lord Denman (20 January 1853).
“The greater the interest involved in a truth the more careful, self-distrustful, and patient should be the inquiry. I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place, because, such as it is, it is better than nothing.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William Lloyd Garrison (1853).
“A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; while we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell. We live a while in Boston, and then a while in New York, and then, perhaps, turn up at Cincinnati. Scarcely any body with us is living where they expect to live and die. The man that dies in the house he was born in is a wonder. There is something pleasant in the permanence and repose of the English family estate, which we, in America, know very little of.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854).
“Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Minister's Wooing (1859) Ch. 21 The Bruised Flax-Flower
“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.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Pearl of Orr's Island : A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862).
“In the old times, women did not get their lives written, though I don't doubt many of them were much better worth writing than the men's.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Pearl of Orr's Island : A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862).
“The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Pearl of Orr's Island : A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862).
“One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dress, or Who Makes the Fashions" in The Atlantic Monthly (1864).
“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.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Lady Who Does Her Own Work" in The Atlantic Monthly (1864).
“The burning of rebellious thoughts in the little breast, of internal hatred and opposition, could not long go on without slight whiffs of external smoke, such as mark the course of subterranean fire.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Old Town Folks (1869) Ch. 2.
“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.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Old Town Folks (1869) Ch. 39 Last Days In Cloud-Land
“When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you could n't hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that 's just the place and time that the tide 'll turn. Never trust to prayer without using every means in your power, and never use the means without trusting in prayer. Get your evidences of grace by pressing forward to the mark, and not by groping with a lantern after the boundary-lines, — and so, boys, go, and God bless you!”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Old Town Folks (1869) Ch. 39 (p. 507) Sometimes paraphrased: "When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that …
“When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean And billows wild contend with angry roar, 'T is said, far down beneath the wild commotion That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore. Far, far beneath, the noise of tempests dieth And silver waves chime ever peacefully, And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flyeth Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to an 1879 edition.
“It don't look well, now, for a feller to be praisin' himself; but I say it jest because it's the truth. I believe I'm reckoned to bring in about the finest droves of niggers that is brought in, — at least, I've been told so; if I have once, I reckon I have a hundred times, — all in good case, — fat and likely, and I lose as few as any man in the business. And I lays it all to my management, sir; and humanity, sir, I may say, is the great pillar of my management.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, I've been laughed at for my notions, sir, and I've been talked to. They an't pop'lar, and they an't common; but I stuck to 'em, sir; I've stuck to 'em, and realized well on 'em; yes, sir, they have paid their passage, I may say," and the trader laughed at his joke. There was something so piquant and original in these elucidations of humanity, that Mr. Shelby could not help laughing in company. Perhaps you laugh too, dear reader; but you know humanity comes out in a variety of strange forms now-a-days, and there is no end to the odd things that humane people will say and do.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, good-by, Uncle Tom; keep a stiff upper lip.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The horrid cruelties and outrages that once and a while find their way into the papers — such cases as Prue's, for example — what do they come from? In many cases, it is a gradual hardening process on both sides — the owner growing more and more cruel, as the servant more and more callous. Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good not to do harm.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O, with what freshness, what solemnity and beauty, is each new day born; as if to say to insensate man, "Behold! thou hast one more chance! Strive for immortal glory!" There is no speech nor language where this voice is not heard; but the bold, bad man heard it not. He woke with an oath and a curse. What to him was the gold and purple, the daily miracle of morning!”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond?”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Legree had had the slumbering moral elements in him roused by his encounters with Tom, — roused, only to be resisted by the determinate force of evil; but still there was a thrill and commotion of the dark, inner world, produced by every word, or prayer, or hymn, that reacted in superstitious dread.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What can any individual do? Of that, every individual can judge. There is one thing that every individual can do, — they can see to it that they feel right. 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. See, then, to your sympathies in this matter! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? or are they swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy?”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved, — but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human nature is above all things — lazy.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Care and labor are as much correlated to human existence as shadow is to light...”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A woman's health is her capital.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life's undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room, from which we go forth to more careful and guarded intercourse, leaving behind us much debris of cast-off and everyday clothing.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred — that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt.... If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The obstinancy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinancy of folly and inanity.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A little reflection will enable any person to detect in himself that setness in trifles which is the result of the unwatched instinct of self-will and to establish over himself a jealous guardianship.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, if the principle of toleration were once admitted into classical education — if it were admitted that the great object is to read and enjoy a language, and the stress of the teaching were placed on the few things absolutely essential to this result, if the tortoise were allowed time to creep, and the bird permitted to fly, and the fish to swim, towards the enchanted and divine sources of Helicon — all might in their own way arrive there, and rejoice in its flowers, its beauty, and its coolness.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Harriet lived in Connecticut and influenced antislavery in her book "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Harriet was a optimist who expressed her feelings by writing. Harriet was listed as one of the people who started the civil war. She started it from one of her books (It was the most influencial book in all of American History) However, Harriet was a very successful person and never stood down.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How, then, shall a Christian bear fruit? By efforts and struggles to obtain that which is freely given; by meditations on watchfulness, on prayer, on action, on temptation, and on dangers? 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. Christians in whom these dispositions are once firmly fixed, go on calmly as the sleeping infant borne in the arms of its mother. Christ reminds them of every duty in its time and place—reproves them for every error—counsels them in every difficulty, excites them to every needful activity. In spiritual, as in temporal matters, they take no thought for the morrow—for they know that Christ will be as accessible tomorrow as to-day, and that time imposes no barrier on his love. Their hope and trust rest solely on what he is willing and able to do for them; on nothing that they suppose themselves able and willing to do for him.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was called a good fellow, — only a little lumpish, — and as he was brave and faithful, he rose in time to be a shipmaster. But when came the business of making money, the aptitude for accumulating, George found himself distanced by many a one with not half his general powers. What shall a man do with a sublime tier of moral faculties, when the most profitable business out of his port is the slave-trade? So it was in Newport in those days. George's first voyage was on a slaver, and he wished himself dead many a time before it was over, — and ever after would talk like a man beside himself, if the subject was named. He declared that the gold made in it was distilled from human blood, from mothers' tears, from the agonies and dying groans of gasping, suffocating men and women, and that it would sear and blister the soul of him that touched it; in short, he talked as whole-souled, unpractical fellows are apt to talk about what respectable people sometimes do. Nobody had ever instructed him that a slaveship, with a procession of expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely. packed heathens are brought over to enjoy the light of the Gospel. So, though George was acknowledged to be a good fellow, and honest as the noon-mark on the kitchen floor, he let slip so many chances of making money as seriously to compromise his reputation among thriving folks. He was wastefully generous — insisted on treating every poor dog that came in his way, in any foreign port, as a brother — absolutely refused to be party in cheating or deceiving the heathen on any shore, or in skin of any color — and also took pains, as far as in him lay, to spoil any bargains which any of his subordinates founded on the ignorance or weakness of his fellow-men. So he made voyage after voyage, and gained only his wages and the reputation among his employers of an incorruptibly honest fellow.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Minister's Wooing (1859) Ch. 1 Pre-Railroad Times.
“Not only was he ignorant, but he had not even those conditions within himself which made knowledge possible. All that there was developed of him, at present, was a fund of energy, self-esteem, hope, courage, and daring, the love of action, life, and adventure; his life was in the outward and present, not in the inward and reflective; he was a true ten-year old boy, in its healthiest and most animal perfection. What she was, the small pearl with the golden hair, with her frail and high-strung organization, her sensitive nerves, her half-spiritual fibres, her ponderings, and marvels, and dreams, her power of love, and yearning for self-devotion, our readers may, perhaps, have seen. But if ever two children, or two grown people, thus organized, are thrown into intimate relations, it follows, from the very laws of their being, that one must hurt the other, simply by being itself; one must always hunger for what the other has not to give.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Pearl of Orr's Island : A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862) Online scans at the Making of America project.
“Well, mother, people have different names for different things. I hear a great deal about Ellery Davenport's tact and knowledge of the world, and all that; but he does a great deal of what I call lying, — so there! Now there are some folks who lie blunderingly, and unskilfully, but I 'll say for Ellery Davenport that he can lie as innocently and sweetly and prettily as a French woman, and I can't say any more. And if a woman does n't want to believe him, she just must n't listen to him, that 's all. I always believe him when he is around, but when he 's away and I think him over, I know just what he is, and see just what an old fool he has made of me." These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Old Town Folks (1869) Ch. 25.