Quotes from Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
By Norma Brickner | On June 26, 2020 | Updated September 19, 2026 | Comments (1)
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s impactful novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), was the first ever to be an international best-seller. Following is a selection of quotes from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which isn’t always considered great literature, but is credited for helping to turn public opinion against slavery.
More than 1.5 million copies of the anti-slavery novel were sold worldwide during its first year of release in 1852. The novel helped fuel the anti-slavery movement, and is thought to have changed the course of history as well the publication business. No other book sold as many copies in the 19th century, other than the Bible.
Stowe’s astounding success with novel affected the fight for the abolition of slavery and displayed her fearlessness by writing on this subject in a white-dominated world.
Ever modest, Stowe barely took credit for her work. “I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation,” she wrote in the introduction to the 1879 edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Further, she explained in the Author’s Preface:
“The object of these sketches is to awaken sympathy and feeling for the African race, as they exist among us; to show their wrongs and sorrows, under a system so necessarily cruel and unjust as to defeat and do away the good effects of all that can be attempted for them, by their best friends, under it.”
. . . . . . . . . . .
How Harriet Beecher Stowe was Inspired to Write Uncle Tom’s Cabin
. . . . . . . . . . .
“I have been careful, and I have been patient, but it’s growing worse and worse; flesh and blood can’t bear it any longer … I won’t bear it. No, I won’t!” (Chapter 3, An Evening in Uncle Tom’s Cabin)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it, but she staid there not a moment. With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake;—stumbling—leaping—slipping—springing upwards again! Her shoes are gone—her stockings cut from her feet—while blood marked every step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side …” (Chapter 7, The Mother’s Struggle)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures! It’s a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I’ll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do!” — (Chapter 9, In Which It Appears That a Senator Is But a Man)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“Now, John, I don’t know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow.” (Chapter 9, In Which It Appears That a Senator Is But a Man)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“My country again! Mr. Wilson, you have a country; but what country have I, or anyone like me, born of slave mothers? What laws are there for us? We don’t make them,—we don’t consent to them,—we have nothing to do with them; all they do for us is to crush us, and keep us down.” (Chapter 11, In Which Property Gets into an Improper State of Mind)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“Sir, 1 haven’t any country, any more than I have any father. But I’m going to have one. I don’t want anything of your country, except to let me alone—to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I’ll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!” (Chapter 11, In Which Property Gets into an Improper State of Mind)
. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
“So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don’t somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?” (Chapter 12, Select Incident of Lawful Trade)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“In a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.” (Chapter 14, Evangeline)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good.” (Chapter 15, Of Tom’s New Master, and Various Other Matters)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“I make no manner of doubt that you threw a very diamond of truth at me, though you see it hit me so directly in the face that it wasn’t exactly appreciated, at first.” (Chapter 16, Tom’s New Master)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“Everything your money can buy, given with a cold, averted face, is not worth one honest tear shed in real sympathy?” (Chapter 16, Tom’s New Master)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“Treat ’em like dogs, and you’ll have dogs’ works and dogs’ actions. Treat ’em like men, and you’ll have men’s works.” (Chapter 19, Miss Ophelia’s Experiences and Opinions)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere matter, for the most part, of latitude and longitude, and geographical position, acting with natural temperament. The greater part is nothing but an accident.” (Chapter 19, Miss Ophelia’s Experiences and Opinions)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good not to do harm.” (Chapter 23, Henrique)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“Death! Strange that there should be such a word, and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be living, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day, and the next be gone, utterly gone, and forever!” (Chapter 26, Death)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed.” (Chapter 28, Reunion)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“There have been times when I have thought, if the whole country would sink, and hide all this injustice and misery from the light, I would willingly sink with it.” (Chapter 28, Reunion)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“The longest way must have its close — the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.” (Chapter 35, The Tokens)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“…the heart has no tears to give, — it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.” (Chapter 36, Emmeline and Cassy).
. . . . . . . . . . .
“No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.” (Chapter 36, Emmeline and Cassy)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“All men are free and equal, in the grave,” (Chapter 37, Liberty)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“Deeds of heroism are wrought here more than those of romance, when, defying torture, and braving death itself, the fugitive voluntarily threads his way back to the terrors and perils of that dark land, that he may bring out his sister, or mother, or wife.” (Chapter 37, Liberty)
. . . . . . . . . . .
Learn more about Harriet Beecher Stowe
. . . . . . . . . . .
“I’ve lost everything in this world, and it’s clean gone, forever — and now I can’t lose heaven, too; no, I can’t get to be wicked, besides all.” (Chapter 38, The Victory)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“I am braver than I was because I have lost all; and he who has nothing to lose can afford all risks.” (Chapter 38,The Victory)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which endurance is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage.” (Chapter 38, The Victory)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.” (Chapter 42, An Authentic Ghost Story)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“It is with the oppressed, enslaved, African race that I cast in my lot; and if I wished anything, I would wish myself two shades darker, rather than one lighter.” (Chapter 43, Results)
. . . . . . . . . . .
“We ought to be free to meet and mingle —to rise by our individual worth, without any consideration of caste or color; and they who deny us this right are false to their own professed principals of human equality.” (Chapter 43, Results)
. . . . . . . . . .
“Every nation that carries in its bosom great and unredressed injustice has in it the elements of this last convulsion.” (Chapter 45, Concluding Remarks)
. . . . . . . . . . .
More about Uncle Tom’s Cabin
- The First Great American Novel
- The Pervading Influence of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on Pop Culture
- Listen to a free audio recording on Librivox
I have a fragment of the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin Life Among the Lowly: 1852. From the title page to the last page of chapter VII, Probably from my mother’s side of the family (she was born in 1901). On the title page it says Vol I Ninetieth Thousand. Beneath that, BOSTON
John P. Jewett & Company Cleveland, Ohio Jewett, Proctor & Worthington. 1852
What does all this mean in terms of being unusual, or of any value, or how many publishers printed “first editions”?