Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes

Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

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.

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.

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

Whipping and abuse are like laudanum: you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.

No ornament of a house can compare with books; they are constant company in a room, even when you are not reading them.

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

Nobody had ever instructed him that a slave-ship, with a procession of expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely-packed heathen are brought over to enjoy the light of the Gospel.

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.

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

The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Money is a great help everywhere; - can't have too much, if you get it honestly.

At last I have come into a dreamland.

Treat 'em like dogs, and you'll have dogs' works and dogs' actions. Treat 'em like men, and you'll have men's works.

No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.

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.

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.

These Germans seem an odd race, a mixture of clay and spirit - what with their beer-drinking and smoking, and their slow, stolid ways, you would think them perfectly earth; but ethereal fire is all the while working in them, and bursing out in most unexpected jets of poetry and sentiment, like blossoms on a cactus.

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.

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

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!

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!

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.

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.

Sweet souls around us watch us still, press nearer to our side; Into our thoughts, into our prayers, with gentle helpings glide.

What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic.

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

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!

Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.

If you were not already my dearly loved husband I should certainly fall in love with you.

Fanaticism is governed by imagination rather than judgment.

The literature of a people must so ring from the sense of its nationality; and nationality is impossible without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty.

Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life's undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room.

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.

To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably.

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.

The beautiful must ever rest in the arms of the sublime. The gentle needs the strong to sustain it, as much as the rock-flowers need rocks to grow on, or the ivy the rugged wall which it embraces.

Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow.

Friendships are discovered rather than made.

So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to the master - so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil - so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best-regulated administration of slavery.

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.

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.