53 quotes
Great as the preparations were for the dinner, everything was so contrived that not a soul in the house should be kept from the morning service of Thanksgiving in the church.
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.
Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings.
Household Papers and Stories (1864)
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.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
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.
Household Papers and Stories (1864)
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.
Little Foxes (1865)
Are the honorable, the just, the high-minded and compassionate, the majority anywhere in this world?
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flyeth
Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.
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.
Old Town Folks (1869)
'Cause I's wicked,—I is. I's mighty wicked, anyhow, I can't help it.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
A woman's health is her capital.
Household Papers and Stories (1864)
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.
The Pearl of Orr's Island : A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862)
So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
A day of grace is yet held out to us.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
We hear often of the distress of the negro servants, on the loss of a kind master; and with good reason, for no creature on God's earth is left more utterly unprotected and desolate than the slave in these circumstances.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
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.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
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.
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.
"Lor bless ye, yes! These critters ain't like white folks, you know; they gets over things, only manage right. Now, they say," said Haley, assuming a candid and confidential air, "that this kind o' trade is hardening to the feelings; but I never found it so.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
The greater the interest involved in a truth the more careful, self-distrustful, and patient should be the inquiry.
I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place, because, such as it is, it is better than nothing.
Letter to William Lloyd Garrison (1853)