Quotes by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Friendships are discovered rather than made.

He obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you ¦ never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

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

The burning of rebellious thoughts in the little breast, of internal hatred and opposition, could not long go on without slight whiffs of external smoke, such as mark the course of subterranean fire.

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems 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.

So subtle is the atmosphere of opinion that it will make itself felt without words.

Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow.

Concern for animals is a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.

In the gates of eternity, the black band and the white hand hold each other with an equal clasp.

The hand of benevolence is everywhere stretched out, searching into abuses, righting wrongs, alleviating distresses, and bringing to the knowledge and sympathies of the world the lowly, the oppressed, and the forgotten.

The longest way must have its close -- the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.

Mountains are nature's testimonials of anguish; they are the sharp cry of a groaning and travailing creation.

Can anybody tell what sorrows are locked up with our best affections, or what pain may be associated with every pleasure?

Rome is an astonishment!

It lies around us like a cloud- A world we do not see; Yet the sweet closing of an eye May bring us there to be.

It would be an incalculable gain to domestic happiness, if people would begin the concert of life with their instruments tuned to a very low pitch: they who receive the most happiness are generally they who demand and expect the least.

Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good not to do harm.

They that cannot govern themselves cannot govern others (Pg. 238).

Fanaticism is governed by imagination rather than judgment.

What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere matter, for the most part, of latitude and longitude, and geographical position, acting with natural temperament. The greater part is nothing but an accident.

George was, in truth, one of the sort who evidently have made some mistake in coming into this world at all, as their internal furniture is in no way suited to its general courses and currents.

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

People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first. Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.

The greater the interest involved in a truth the more careful, self-distrustful, and patient should be the inquiry.I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place, because, such as it is, it is better than nothing.

Care and labor are as much correlated to human existence as shadow is to light.

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

Let us never doubt everything that ought to happen is going to happen.

God washes the eyes by tears unil they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more.

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

The number of those men who know how to use wholly irresponsible power humanely and generously is small. Everybody knows this, and the slave knows it best of all.

Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.

One can see, you know, very easily, how others ought to be martyrs.

He invented mother's hearts -- andamp; he certainly has the pattern in his own.

I tell you, said Augustine, if there is anything that revealed with the strength of a divine law in our times, it is that the masses are to rise, and the under class becomes the upper one.

It has always been a favorite idea of mine, that there is so much of the human in every man, that the life of any one individual, however obscure, if really and vividly perceived in all its aspirations, struggles, failures, and successes, would command the interest of all others.

There is more done with pens than with swords.

There is no phase of the Italian mind that has not found expression in its music.

Just so sure as one puts on any old rag, and thinks nobody will come, company is sure to call.

The ship, built on one element, but designed to have its life in another, seemed an image of the soul, formed and fashioned with many a weary hammer-stroke in this life, but finding its true element only when it sails out into the ocean of eternity.

Prayer is a long rope with a strong hold.

Sensitive people never like the fatigue of justifying their instincts.

It is one mark of a superior mind to understand and be influenced by the superiority of others.

It is always our treasure that the lightning strikes.

The heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage.

People who hate trouble generally get a good deal of it.

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.

My vocation to preach on paper.

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

We hear often of the distress of the negro servants, on the loss of a kind master; and with good reason, for no creature on God's earth is left more utterly unprotected and desolate than the slave in these circumstances.

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.

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 the human race.

Cathedrals do not seem to me to have been built. They seem, rather, stupendous growths of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt.

The country is almost ruined with pious white people: such pious politicians as we have just before elections, such pious goings on in all departments of church and state, that a fellow does not know who'll cheat him next.

Midnight, -- strange mystic hour, -- when the veil between the frail present and the eternal future grows thin.

The pain of discipline is short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal.

The same quickness which makes a mind buoyant in gladness often makes it gentlest and most sympathetic in sorrow.

Dogs can bear more cold than human beings, but they do not like cold any better than we do; and when a dog has his choice, he will very gladly stretch himself on a rug before the fire for his afternoon nap.

While politicians contend, and men are swerved this way and that by conflicting tides of interest and passion, the great cause of human liberty is in the hands of one...who shall not fail nor be discouraged.

It is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.

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.

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.

The temperaments of children are often as oddly unsuited to parents as if capricious fairies had been filling cradles with changelings.

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.

As oil will find its way into crevices where water cannot penetrate, so song will find its way where speech can no longer enter.

At last I have come into a dreamland.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man. Life and death to him are haunted grounds, filled with goblin forms of vague and shadowy dread.

Intemperance in eating is one of the most fruitful of all causes of disease and death.

Everyone confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but practically 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.

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.

He who has nothing to lose can afford all risks.

In the old times, women did not get their lives written, though I don't doubt many of them were much better worth writing than the men's.

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

Get your evidences of grace by pressing forward to the mark, and not by groping with a lantern after the boundary lines.

A little reflection will enable any person to detect in himself that setness in trifles which is the result of the unwatched instinct of self-will and to establish over himself a jealous guardianship.

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.

Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings.

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.

A true gentleman ... was characterized as the man that asks the fewest questions. This trait of refined society might be adopted into home-like in a far greater degree than it is, and make it far more agreeable.

I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred -- that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt. If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend.

If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend.

What a fool is he who locks his door to keep out spirits, who has in his own bosom a spirit he dares not meet alone; whose voice, smothered far down, and piled over with mountains of earthliness, is yet like the forewarning trumpet of doom!

I did not write it (Uncle Tom's Cabin). 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.

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.

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 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.

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?

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

Love is very beautiful, but very, very sad.

I don't know as I am fit for anything and I have thought that I could wish to die young and let the remembrance of me and my faults perish in the grave rather than live, as I fear I do, a trouble to everyone.... Sometimes I could not sleep and have groaned and cried till midnight.

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