Harriet Beecher Stowe > Quotes

“The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“Soon after the completion of his college course, his whole nature was kindled into one intense and passionate effervescence of romantic passion. His hour came,—the hour that comes only once; his star rose in the horizon,—that star that rises so often in vain, to be remembered only as a thing of dreams; and it rose for him in vain. To drop the figure,—he saw and won the love of a high-minded and beautiful woman, in one of the northern states, and they were affianced. He returned south to make arrangements for their marriage, when, most unexpectedly, his letters were returned to him by mail, with a short note from her guardian, stating to him that ere this reached him the lady would be the wife of another. Stung to madness, he vainly hoped, as many another has done, to fling the whole thing from his heart by one desperate effort. Too proud to supplicate or seek explanation, he threw himself at once into a whirl of fashionable society, and in a fortnight from the time of the fatal letter was the accepted lover of the reigning belle of the season; and as soon as arrangements could be made, he became the husband of a fine figure, a pair of bright dark eyes, and a hundred thousand dollars; and, of course, everybody thought him a happy fellow.

The married couple were enjoying their honeymoon, and entertaining a brilliant circle of friends in their splendid villa, near Lake Pontchartrain, when, one day, a letter was brought to him in that well-remembered writing. It was handed to him while he was in full tide of gay and successful conversation, in a whole room-full of company. He turned deadly pale when he saw the writing, but still preserved his composure, and finished the playful warfare of badinage which he was at the moment carrying on with a lady opposite; and, a short time after, was missed from the circle. In his room,alone, he opened and read the letter, now worse than idle and useless to be read. It was from her, giving a long account of a persecution to which she had been exposed by her guardian's family, to lead her to unite herself with their son: and she related how, for a long time, his letters had ceased to arrive; how she had written time and again, till she became weary and doubtful; how her health had failed under her anxieties, and how, at last, she had discovered the whole fraud which had been practised on them both. The letter ended with expressions of hope and thankfulness, and professions of undying affection, which were more bitter than death to the unhappy young man. He wrote to her immediately:

I have received yours,—but too late. I believed all I heard. I was desperate. I am married, and all is over. Only forget,—it is all that remains for either of us."

And thus ended the whole romance and ideal of life for Augustine St. Clare. But the real remained,—the real, like the flat, bare, oozy tide-mud, when the blue sparkling wave, with all its company of gliding boats and white-winged ships, its music of oars and chiming waters, has gone down, and there it lies, flat, slimy, bare,—exceedingly real.

Of course, in a novel, people's 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 us.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Little Foxes; or, The Insignificant Little Habits Which Mar Domestic Happiness

“...the heart has no tears to give,--it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you until it seems that you cannot hold on for a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time when the tide will turn.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe

“Of course, in a novel, people’s 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 us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe

“There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“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 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.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe

“Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good not to do harm.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one’s feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions, - pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.”
― 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.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

“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 less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe

“Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“I am braver than I was because I have lost all; and he who has nothing to lose can afford all risks.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe

“It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.”
― 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.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“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 gone, utterly gone, and forever!”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I haven't any country, anymore than I have any father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of your country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“What's your hurry?"
Because now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in," said Miss Ophelia.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes!”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“O, with what freshness, what solemnity and beauty, is each new day born; as if to say to insensate man, "Behold! thou hast one more chance! Strive for immortal glory!”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe

“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.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe

“Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

“I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people's
glass houses, but I never mean to put up one for them to stone.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin