Quotes by Harriet Beecher Stowe

About Harriet Beecher Stowe:

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe is best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). It depicts the harsh life for African Americans under slavery. It reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and Great Britain. It energized anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. She wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential for both her writings and her public stands on social issues of the day.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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.

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

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 considerations have gone down like drift-wood before a riv...

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

Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!

Harriet Beecher Stowe

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 you...

Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

Harriet Beecher Stowe

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 on...

Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

Harriet Beecher Stowe

«Couldn't never be nothin' but a nigger, if I was ever so good,» said Topsy. «If I could be skinned, and come white, I'd try then.»

Harriet Beecher Stowe

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.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Well," said St. Clare, "suppose that something shoul bring down the price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a drug in the market, don't you think we should soon have another version of the Scripture doctrine? What flood of...

Harriet Beecher Stowe

The benevolent gentleman is sorry; but, then, the thing happens every day! One sees girls and mothers crying at these sales, always! it can't be helped, etc.; and he walks off, with his acquisition, in another direction.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

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.

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

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

A woman's health is her capital.

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

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...

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author Bio

  • NameHarriet Beecher Stowe
  • DescriptionAbolitionist, author
  • BornJune 14, 1811
  • DiedJuly 1, 1896
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • WorksUncle Tom's Cabin; A Key To Uncle Tom's Cabin; Dred: A Tale Of The Great Dismal Swamp
  • AwardsNational Women's Hall Of Fame