Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes

164 Sourced Quotes

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.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
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.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure that I had a better one to put in its place, because such as it is, it is better than nothing.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
Now, if the principle of toleration were once admitted into classical education — if it were admitted that the great object is to read and enjoy a language, and the stress of the teaching were placed on the few things absolutely essential to this result, if the tortoise were allowed time to creep, and the bird permitted to fly, and the fish to swim, towards the enchanted and divine sources of Helicon — all might in their own way arrive there, and rejoice in its flowers, its beauty, and its coolness.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
O, ye who visit the distressed, do ye know that everything your money can buy, given with a cold, averted face, is not worth one honest tear shed in real sympathy?

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

Harriet Beecher Stowe
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.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean
And billows wild contend with angry roar,
'T is 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.

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
Legree had had the slumbering moral elements in him roused by his encounters with Tom, — roused, only to be resisted by the determinate force of evil; but still there was a thrill and commotion of the dark, inner world, produced by every word, or prayer, or hymn, that reacted in superstitious dread.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
There is no independence and pertinacity of opinion like that of these seemingly soft, quiet creatures, whom it is so easy to silence, and so difficult to convince.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
Who shall interpret what is meant by the sweet jargon of robin and oriole and bobolink, with their endless reiterations? Something wiser, perhaps, than we dream of in our lower life here.

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.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
Let us never doubt, everything that ought to happen is going to happen.

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

Harriet Beecher Stowe
Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
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.

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

Harriet Beecher Stowe
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
The soul awakes... between two dim eternities — the eternal past, the eternal future.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
One part of the science of living is to learn just what our own responsibility is, and to let other people's alone.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
What can any individual do? Of that, every individual can judge. There is one thing that every individual can do, — they can see to it that they feel right. 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. See, then, to your sympathies in this matter! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? or are they swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy?

Harriet Beecher Stowe
The obstinancy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinancy of folly and inanity.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
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!" There is no speech nor language where this voice is not heard; but the bold, bad man heard it not. He woke with an oath and a curse. What to him was the gold and purple, the daily miracle of morning!

Harriet Beecher Stowe
Between the mysteries of death and life
Thou standest, loving, guiding,— not explaining;
We ask, and Thou art silent,— yet we gaze,
And our charmed hearts forget their drear complaining;
No crushing fate, no stony destiny!
Thou Lamb that hast been slain, we rest in Thee.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
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 country I trembled at the coming day of wrath.
It is no merit in the sorrowful that they weep, or to the oppressed and smothering that they gasp and struggle, not to me, that I must speak for the oppressed — who cannot speak for themselves.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
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.

Harriet Beecher Stowe
"Now, I've been laughed at for my notions, sir, and I've been talked to. They an't pop'lar, and they an't common; but I stuck to 'em, sir; I've stuck to 'em, and realized well on 'em; yes, sir, they have paid their passage, I may say," and the trader laughed at his joke.
There was something so piquant and original in these elucidations of humanity, that Mr. Shelby could not help laughing in company. Perhaps you laugh too, dear reader; but you know humanity comes out in a variety of strange forms now-a-days, and there is no end to the odd things that humane people will say and do.

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

Harriet Beecher Stowe
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 a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend.

Harriet Beecher Stowe