Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good not to do harm."

"People have wondered where the seat of original sin is; I think it s in the stomach. A man eats too much and neglects exercise, and the Devil has him all his own way, and the little imps, with their long black fingers, play on his nerves like a piano. Never overwork either body or mind, boys. All the work that a man can do that can be rested by one nights sleep is good for him, but fatigue that goes into the next day is always bad."

"Well, mother, people have different names for different things. I hear a great deal about Ellery Davenports tact and knowledge of the world, and all that; but he does a great deal of what I call lying, — so there! Now there are some folks who lie blunderingly, and unskilfully, but I ll say for Ellery Davenport that he can lie as innocently and sweetly and prettily as a French woman, and I cant say any more. And if a woman does nt want to believe him, she just must nt listen to him, that s all. I always believe him when he is around, but when he s away and I think him over, I know just what he is, and see just what an old fool he has made of me." These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new."

"Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow — the shadow of law. So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master — so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil — so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery."

"As our President said, we have in our army such minds as Spencer, and Mill, and I would add Buckle, and many others; and they are diffusing light, intelligence and civilization, and advocating the right. We have women also. We have Frances P. Cobbe; whose name I speak with pride and rejoicing; and in the literary world we have Charlotte Bronte, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and many others, who are consecrating their talents to the great cause of womanhood, and freedom, and right."

"Women are the real architects of society."