Quotes from Harriet Beecher Stowe

I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.

I make no manner of doubt that you threw a very diamond of truth at me, though you see it hit me so directly in the face that it wasn't exactly appreciated, at first.

The greater the interest involved in a truth the more careful, self-distrustful, and patient should be the inquiry.

There are two classes of human beings in this world: one class seem made to give love, and the other to take it.

it isn't mere love and good-will that is needed in a sick-room; it needs knowledge and experience.

Love needs new leaves every summer of life, as much as your elm-tree, and new branches to grow broader and wider, and new flowers to cover the ground.

There is a great life-giving, warming power called Love, which exists in human hearts dumb and unseen, but which has no real life, no warming power, till set free by expression.

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 is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

Half the misery in the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth plainly and in a spirit of love.

Gems, in fact, are a species of mineral flowers; they are the blossoms of the dark, hard mine; and what they want in perfume, they make up in durability.

The Lord gives a good many things twice over, but he don't give ye a mother but once.

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.

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, 'til it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

I long to put the experience of fifty years at once into your young lives, to give you at once the key to that treasure chamber every gem of which has cost me tears and struggles and prayers, but you must work for these inward treasures yourselves.

The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.

'Cause I's wicked, - I is. I's mighty wicked, anyhow, I can't help it.

There is no study of human nature more interesting than the aspects of the same subject seen in the points of view of different characters. One might almost imagine that there were no such thing as absolute truth, since a change of situation or temperament is capable of changing the whole force of an argument.

The world has been busy for some centuries in shutting and locking every door through which a woman could step into wealth, except the door of marriage.

No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.

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

But there are hours when, from the heavens unfolding, Come down the angels with the glad release; And we look upward, to behold in glory Our suffering loved ones borne away to peace.

The first child in a family is its poem, — it is a sort of nativity play, and we bend before the younger stranger with gifts, "gold, frankincense, and myrrh." But the tenth child in a poor family is prose, and gets simply what is due to comfort. There are no superfluities, no fripperies, no idealities, about the tenth cradle.

When our soul has been cast down, has never an invisible voice whispered, "There is lifting up"? Have not gales and breezes of sweet and healing thought been wafted over us, as if an angel had shaken from his wings the odors of paradise?

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women.