Top 192 Quotes & Sayings by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the Beecher family, a religious family, and became best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans. The book reached an audience of millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and in Great Britain, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings and for her public stances and debates on social issues of the day.

Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong.
To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably.
Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm. — © Harriet Beecher Stowe
Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.
No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.
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.
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
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.
Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good.
So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women.
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.
Friendships are discovered rather than made.
Whipping and abuse are like laudanum: you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.
It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done. — © Harriet Beecher Stowe
It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.
Human nature is above all things lazy.
I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place.
The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.
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.
A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell.
The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.
Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
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.
I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.
Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.
A woman's health is her capital.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 pain of discipline is short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal.
I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak... I hope every woman who can write will not be silent.
Witness, eternal God! Oh, witness that, from this hour, I will do what one man can to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!
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 county, I trembled at the coming day of wrath.
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!
Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow.
I did not write it (Uncle Tom's Cabin). God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.
Why don't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?
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
Treat 'em like dogs, and you'll have dogs' works and dogs' actions. Treat 'em like men, and you'll have men's works.
If you destroy delicacy and a sense of shame in a young girl, you deprave her very fast.
It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures.
There is more done with pens than with swords.
The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.
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.
Self respect is impossible without liberty.
If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend.
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.
When I have been travelling up and down on our boats, or about on my collecting tours, and reflected that every brutal, disgusting, mean, low-lived fellow I met, was allowed by our laws to become absolute despot of as many men, women and children, as he could cheat, steal, or gamble money enough to buy,-when I have seen such men in actual ownership of helpless children, of young girls and women,-I have been ready to curse my country, to curse the human race!
...it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery. — © Harriet Beecher Stowe
...it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.
The person who decides what shall be the food and drink of a family, and the modes of its preparation, is the one who decides, to a greater or less extent, what shall be the health of that family.
Money is a great help everywhere; - can't have too much, if you get it honestly.
No ornament of a house can compare with books; they are constant company in a room, even when you are not reading them.
Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.
All men are free and equal in the grave, if it comes to that.
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.
I never thought my book would turn so many people against slavery.
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 all 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.
So subtle is the atmosphere of opinion that it will make itself felt without words.
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.
Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!
Your little child is the only true democrat.
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