105 Best Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes from The American Abolitionist

Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811.

He was a remarkable American author and philanthropist, best known for her novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, which played a significant role in shaping public sentiment against slavery, even influencing the American Civil War.

Raised in a family of prominent Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher, Stowe’s upbringing was steeped in learning and moral earnestness.

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Her life in Cincinnati, Ohio, close to a slave-holding community, coupled with her personal observations and abolitionist readings, inspired her to write her famous tale of slavery.

Published serially in 1851–52, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” quickly became a sensation. Its widespread success solidified both pro- and antislavery sentiments.

Stowe continued her writing career, publishing novels and social studies in both fiction and essay forms, even amidst controversy.

Related: Lydia M. Child Quotes from the American Abolitionist

Residing in Hartford, Connecticut from 1864 until her death in 1896, Stowe dedicated her life to letters and philanthropy.

I have selected some of the top quotes from Harriet Beecher Stowe.


Best Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes

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Rome is an astonishment! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

General rules will bear hard on particular cases. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Prayer is a long rope with a strong hold. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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

It is always our treasure that the lightning strikes. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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

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

Mothers are the most instinctive philosophers. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

His conversation was in free and easy defiance of Murray’s Grammar, and was garnished at convenient intervals with various profane expressions, which not even the desire to be graphic in our account shall induce us to transcribe. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

There is more done with pens than with swords. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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 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… ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Some jokes are less agreeable than others. ~ 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.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The pain of discipline is short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

We never know how we love til we try to unlove! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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

Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Wise Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes

I never thought my book would turn so many people against slavery. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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

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

Self respect is impossible without liberty… ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ 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.

My vocation to preach on paper. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ 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.

I am braver than I was because I have lost all; and he who has nothing to lose can afford all risks. ~ 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.

Your little child is the only true democrat. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Top Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes

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! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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.

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Love is very beautiful, but very, very sad. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow. ~ 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.

That ignorant confidence in one’s self and one’s future, which comes in life’s first dawn, has a sort of mournful charm in experienced eyes, who know how much it all amounts to. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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

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

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

Famous Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes

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? ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

There are two classes of human beings in this world: one class seem made to give love, and the other to take it. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Human nature is above all things lazy. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Great Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes

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. ~ 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.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Behold! thou hast one more chance! Strive for immortal glory! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The longest day must have its close – the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Profound Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The power of fictitious writing, for good as well as evil is a thing which ought most seriously to be reflected on. No one can fail to see that in our day it is becoming a very great agency. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life; and homely services rendered for love’s sake have in them a poetry that is immortal. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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

Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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? ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

At last I have come into a dreamland… ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Sensitive people never like the fatigue of justifying their instincts. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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

Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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

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

Women’s Day Women are the real architects of society. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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

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

The longest way must have its close – the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Deep Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes

When a man can walk up to the ballot-box with his wife or sister on his arm, the voting places will be far more agreeable than now… ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The world has been busy for some centuries in shutting and locking every door through which a woman could step into wealth, except the door of marriage. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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

Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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.

The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Friendships are discovered rather than made. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Midnight, – strange mystic hour, – when the veil between the frail present and the eternal future grows thin. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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A woman’s health is her capital. ~ 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.

The water of the river is the calmest, where the deepest. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.

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. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe.


So these were the 105 top Harriet Beecher Stowe quotes on slavery, equality and kindness.

If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on George Harrison quotes and Jessica Rabbit quotes.

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Chandan Negi
Chandan Negi

I’m the Founder of Internet Pillar - I love sharing quotes and motivational content to inspire and motivate people - #quotes #motivation #internetpillar