Quotes from 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.

Let us resolve: First, to attain the grace of silence; second, to deem all fault finding that does no good a sin; third, to practice the grade and virtue of praise.

there are some feelings so agitated and tumultuous, that they can find rest only by being poured into the bosom of Almighty love,—

The water of the river is the calmest, where the deepest.

What is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its earthly time is short? Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or the soul's impulsive throb, as immortality draws on? Be what it may, it rested in the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet, prophetic certainty that Heaven was near; calm as the light of sunset, sweet as the bright stillness of autumn, there her little heart reposed, only troubled by sorrow for those who loved her so dearly.

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.

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.

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.

O, that's what troubles me, papa. You want me to live so happy, and never to have any pain,—never suffer anything,—not even hear a sad story, when other poor creatures have nothing but pain and sorrow, all their lives,—it seems selfish. I ought to know such things, I ought to feel about them!

Sobs, heavy, hoarse and loud, shook the chairs, and great tears fell through his fingers on the floor - just such tears, sir, as you dropped into the coffin where lay your first-born son; such tears, woman, as you shed when you heard the cries of your dying babe; for, sir, he was a man, and you are but another man; and, woman, though dressed in silk and jewels, you are but a woman, and, in life's great straits and mighty griefs, ye feel but one sorrow!

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

Some jokes are less agreeable than others

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

Abraham Lincoln. When he met Stowe, it is claimed that he said, "So you're the little woman that started this great war!

I did not write it. (Uncle Tom's Cabin) God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.

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.

Marie was one of those unfortunately constituted mortals, in whose eyes whatever is lost and gone assumes a value which it never had in possession.

Perhaps," said Miss Ophelia, "it is impossible for a person who does no good not to do harm.

It is with the oppressed, enslaved, African race that I cast in my lot; and if I wished anything, I would wish myself two shades darker, rather than one lighter.

O, because I have had only that kind of benevolence which consists in lying on a sofa, and cursing the church and clergy for not being martyrs and confessors. One can see, you know, very easily, how others ought to be martyrs. -Augustine St. Clare

There's a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing

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.

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.

the Lord gives a good many things twice over, but he don't give ye a mother but once. Ye'll never see such another woman, Mas'r George—not if ye live to be a hundred years old. So, now, you hold on to her, and grow up, and be a comfort to her.