Quotes by Harriet Stowe

• No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.
• Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.
• The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
• The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.
• The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.
• 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.
• To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably.
• 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.
• Whipping and abuse are like laudanum: you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.
• 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.
• Where painting is weakest, namely, in the expression of the highest moral and spiritual ideas, there music is sublimely strong.
• 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.
• So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women.
• Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.
• A woman's health is her capital.
• 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.
• Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good.
• Friendships are discovered rather than made.
• Human nature is above all things lazy.
• I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.
• I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place.
• 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.
• It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.
• 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.