Quotes from Harriet Beecher Stowe

The literature of a people must so ring from the sense of its nationality; and nationality is impossible without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty.

Self respect is impossible without liberty.

Everyone confesses that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us; but 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.

Love is very beautiful, but very, very sad.

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

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

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.

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

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.

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.

Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.

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.

the delicacy that respects a friend's silence is one of the charms of life.

Friendships are discovered rather than made.

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

O, ye who visit the distressed, do ye know that everything your money can buy, given with a cold, averted face, is not worth one honest tear shed in real sympathy?

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!

What's your hurry?" Because now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in," said Miss Ophelia.

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.

I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place.

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

If you were not already my dearly loved husband I should certainly fall in love with you.

We should remember in our dealings with animals that they are a sacred trust to us from our Heavenly Father. They are dumb and cannot speak for themselves.

The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.