Quotes by Harriet Beecher Stowe

“For, so inconsistent is human nature, especially in the ideal, that not to undertake a thing at all seems better than to undertake and come short.”

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

“Of course, in a novel, peoples hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to ...”

“Death! Strange that there should be such a word, and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be living, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day, and the next be g...”

“For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all ones feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - ...”

“It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a...”

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

“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...”

“Mary! Mary! My dear, let me reason with you.I hate reasoning, John,especially reasoning on such subjects. There's a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing; and y...”

“In the midst of life we are in death,'" said Miss Ophelia.”

“Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is l...”

“In Tom's hurried exchange, he had not forgotten to transfer his cherished Bible to his pocket. It was well he did so; for Mr. Legree, having refitted Tom's handcuffs, proceeded deliberately to inve...”

“If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship, - a boundless worship and belief in some hero of your soul, - if ever you have so loved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly consi...”

“...the heart has no tears to give,--it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.”

“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 th...”

“Still waters run deepest, they used to tell me.”

“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 tear...”

“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 ete...”

“Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes!”

“Liberty! -- Electric word!”