The Best Harriet Beecher Stowe quotes

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. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

Humankind above all is lazy. — 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

Self respect is impossible without liberty. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Perhaps,’ said Miss Ophelia, ‘it is impossible for a person who does no good not to do harm. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

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

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

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

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

Once in an age, God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us… not the person that we are, But the angel we may be. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

It isn’t mere love and good–will that is needed in a sick–room; It needs knowledge and experience. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

There is a great life–giving, warming power called Love, which exists in human hearts dumb and unseen, but which has no real life, no warming power, till set free by expression. — 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

Love needs new leaves every summer of life, as much as your elm–tree, and new branches to grow broader and wider, and new flowers to cover the ground. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Could I ever have loved you, had I not known you better than you know yourself? — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Why don’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

Women’s Day Women are the real architects of society. — 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

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

Women are the true modelers of social order. — 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

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. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

One of the greatest reforms that could be, in these reforming days … would be to have women architects. The mischief with the houses built to rent is that they are all male contrivances. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

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

Let my soul calm itself, O Christ, in Thee. This is true. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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. — 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

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

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

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. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

Mothers are the most instinctive philosophers. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Children will grow up substantially what they are by nature––and only that. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

O, what an untold world there is in one human heart! — 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

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. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The heart has no tears to give,––it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

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

There is no phase of the Italian mind that has not found expression in its music. — 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

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