Harriet Beecher Stowe quotes:

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell.

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

In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike.

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!

Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong.

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

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.

Fanaticism is governed by imagination rather than judgment.

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

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

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.

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

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."

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

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.

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

When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean And billows wild contend with angry roar, 'Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore. Far, far beneath, the noise of tempests dieth And silver waves chime ever peacefully, And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flyeth Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.

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

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...

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

I believe I'm done for," said TomThe cussed sneaking dog, to leave me to die alone! My poor old mother always told me 'twould be so."

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."

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place.

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

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

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

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.

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.

Mothers are the most instinctive philosophers.

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

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.

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

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

Praise is sunshine; it warms, it inspires, it promotes growth; blame and rebuke are rain and hail; they beat down and bedraggle, even though they may at times be necessary.

A cook she certainly was, in the very bone and centre of her soul. Not a....turkey....in the barn-yard but looked grave when they saw her approaching, and seemed evidently to be reflecting on their latter end; and certain it was that she was always meditating on trussing, stuffing and roasting, to a degree that was calculated to inspire terror in any reflecting fowl living.

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

No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man

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.

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 to honest and noble natures.

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.

Who was your mother?' 'Never had none!' said the child, with another grin. 'Never had any mother? What do you mean? Where were you born?' 'Never was born!' 'Do you know who made you?' 'Nobody, as I knows on,' said the child, with a short laugh. . . . 'I 'spect I grow'd.'

No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.

Mountains are nature's testimonials of anguish. They are the sharp cry of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing verdureless and stern because exist they must.

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 did not write it (Uncle Tom's Cabin). God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.

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

A woman's health is her capital.

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.

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

I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.

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.

Friendships are discovered rather than made.

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

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

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

A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian Church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protest injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved-but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God.

A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; while we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell. We live a while in Boston, and then a while in New York, and then, perhaps, turn up at Cincinnati. Scarcely any body with us is living where they expect to live and die. The man that dies in the house he was born in is a wonder. There is something pleasant in the permanence and repose of the English family estate, which we, in America, know very little of.

A ship is a beauty and a mystery wherever we see it ...

After all, let a man take what pains he may to hush it down, a human soul is an awful, ghostly, unquiet possession for a bad man to have. Who knows the metes and bounds of it? Who knows all its awful perhapses,--those shudderings and tremblings, which it can no more live down than it can outlive its own eternity?

All men are free and equal in the grave, if it comes to that.

Behold! thou hast one more chance! Strive for immortal glory!

By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond?

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

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

Children will grow up substantially what they are by nature--and only that.

Come down here once, and use your eyes, and you will know more than we can teach you.

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!

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.

Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow.

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.

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.

Friends are discovered rather than made; there are people who are in their own nature friends, only they don't know each other; but certain things, like poetry, music, and paintings are like the Freemason's sign, they reveal the initiated to each other.

General rules will bear hard on particular cases.

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

God has always been to me not so much like a father as like a dear and tender mother.

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

Great as the planning were for the dinner, the lot was so contrived that not a soul in the house be supposed to be kept from the break of day ceremony of Blessing in the church.

Greek is the morning land of languages, and has the freshness of early dew in it which will never exhale.

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.

he who has nothing to lose can afford all risks.

How then shall a Christian bear fruit? By efforts and struggles to obtain that which is freely given? . . . No: there must be a full concentration of the thoughts and affections on Christ; a complete surrender of the whole being to Him; a constant looking to Him for grace.

Human nature is above all things lazy.

Humankind above all is lazy.

I b'lieve in religion, and one of these days, when I've got matters tight and snug, I calculates to tend to my soul ...

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 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.

I honestly do not know if civil disobedience has any effect on the government. I can promise you it has a great effect on the person who chooses to do it. Martin Sheen 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.

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.

I never thought my book would turn so many people against 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 'spect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me.

If I am to write, I must have a room to myself, which shall be my room.

If women want any rights they had better take them, and say nothing about it.

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

in America, far too large a portion of the diet consists of animal food. As a nation, the Americans are proverbial for the gross and luxurious diet with which they load their tables; and there can be no doubt that the general health of the nation would be increased by a change in our customs in this respect.

In lecturing on cookery, as on housebuilding, I divide the subject into, not four, but five grand elements: first, Bread; second,Butter; third, Meat; fourth, Vegetables; and fifth, Tea--by which I mean, generically, all sorts of warm, comfortable drinks served out in teacups, whether they be called tea, coffee, chocolate, broma, or what not. I affirm that, if these five departments are all perfect, the great ends of domestic cookery are answered, so far as the comfort and well-being of life are concerned.

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

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

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.

It is always our treasure that the lightning strikes.

It is generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.

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

it isn't mere love and good-will that is needed in a sick-room; it needs knowledge and experience.

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.

Let my soul calm itself, O Christ, in Thee. This is true