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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
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“Amid ancient lore the Word of God stands unique and pre-eminent. Wonderful in its construction, admirable in its adaptation, it contains truths that a child may comprehend, and mysteries into which angels desire to look.”
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“Oh! when thy heart and home were glad, / I freely shared thy joyous lot; / And now that heart is lone and sad, / Cease to entreat — I'll leave thee not.”
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“He is not dead! he only left / A precious robe of clay behind, / To draw a robe of love and light / Around his disembodied mind.”
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“Oh, was it not strangely inconsistent that men fresh, so fresh, from the baptism of the Revolution should make such concessions to the foul spirit of Despotism! that, when fresh from gaining their own liberty, they could permit the African slave trade — could let their national flag hang a sign of death on Guinea's coast and Congo's shore!”
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“Intense love is often akin to intense suffering ...”
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“I like the character of Moses. He is the first disunionist we read of in the Jewish Scriptures.”
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“The respect that is only bought by gold is not worth much.”
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“We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.”
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“If we have had no past, it is well for us to look hopefully to the future — for the shadows bear the promise of a brighter coming day ...”
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“A woman who could bend to grief, / But would not bow to shame.”
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“Oh, could slavery exist long if it did not sit on a commercial throne?”
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“Now is the time for our women to begin to try to lift up their heads and plant the roots of progress under the hearthstone.”
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“... I belong to this race, and when it is down I belong to a down race; when it is up I belong to a risen race.”
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“A room to myself is a luxury that I do not always enjoy.”
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“... His side had won the day, / Had not we women radicals / Just got right in the way.”
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“But two things are wanting in American civilization — a keener and deeper, broader and tenderer sense of justice — a sense of humanity, which shall crystallize into the life of a nation the sentiment that justice, simple justice, is the right, not simply of the strong and powerful, but of the weakest and feeblest of all God's children ...”
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“Apparent failure may hold in its rough shell the germs of a success that will blossom in time, and bear fruit throughout eternity.”
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“... a towering intellect, grand in its achievements, and glorious in its possibilities, may, with the moral and spiritual faculties held in abeyance, be one of the most dangerous and mischievous forces in the world.”
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“A government which can protect and defend its citizens from wrong and outrage and does not is vicious. A government which would do it and cannot is weak; and where human life is insecure through either weakness or viciousness in the administration of law, there must be a lack of justice and where this is wanting, nothing can make up the deficiency.”
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“One needs both leisure and money to make a successful book.”
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“No man can feel the iron which enters another man's soul.”
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“Though the morning seems to linger / O'er the hill-tops far away, / Yet the shadows bear the promise / Of a brighter coming day.”
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“And what is wrong in woman's life / In man's cannot be right.”
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“True politeness is to social life what oil is to machinery, a thing to oil the ruts and grooves of existence. False politeness can shine without warming and glitter without vivifying.”
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“You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. I as a colored woman have had in this country an education which has made me feel as if I were in the situation of Ishmael, my hands against every man, and every man's hand against me.”
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“Slavery is dead, but the spirit which animated it still lives.”
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“Society cannot afford to neglect the enlightenment of any class of its members.”
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, U.S. writer, poet, abolitionist
(1825 - 1911)