Uncle Tom's Cabin Quotes

“The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.”

“The heart has no tears to give,--it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.”

“Of course, 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. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…”

“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.”

“For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one’s feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions, - pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.”

“Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.”

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

“Treat ‘em like dogs, and you’ll have dogs’ works and dogs’ actions. Treat ‘em like men, and you’ll have men’s works.”

“Could I ever have loved you, had I not known you better than you know yourself?”

“Our friend Tom, in his own simple musings, often compared his more fortunate lot, in the bondage into which he was cast, with that of Joseph in Egypt; and, in fact, as time went on, and he developed more and more under the eye of his master, the strength of the parallel increased.”

“Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.”

“I am braver than I was because I have lost all; and he who has nothing to lose can afford all risks.”

“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.”

“It was on his grave, my friends, that I resolved, before God, that I would never own another slave, while it is possible to free him; that nobody, through me, should ever run the risk of being parted from home and friends, and dying on a lonely plantation, as he died. So, when you rejoice in your freedom, think that you owe it to that good old soul, and pay it back in kindness to his wife and children. Think of your freedom, every time you see uncle tom’s cabin; and let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to follow in his steps, and be as honest and faithful and Christian as he was.”

“Perhaps you laugh too, dear reader; but you know humanity comes out in a variety of strange forms now-a-days, and there is no end to the odd things that humane people will say and do.”

“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!”

“Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.”

“Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes!”

“But it is often those who have least of all in this life whom He chooseth for the kingdom. Put thy trust in Him and no matter what befalls thee here, He will make all right hereafter.”

“Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!”

“Oh my Eva, whose little hour on earth did so much good...what account have I to give for my long years?”

“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.”

“And, perhaps, among us may be found generous spirits, who do not estimate honour and justice by dollars and cents.”

“Tom opened his eyes, and looked upon his master. ‘Ye poor miserable critter!’ he said, ‘there ain’t no more ye can do! I forgive ye, with all my soul!’ and he fainted entirely away.”

“But stronger than all was maternal love, wrought into a paroxysm of frenzy by the near approach of a fearful danger. Her boy was old enough to have walked by her side, and, in an indifferent case, she would only have led him by the hand; but now the bare thought of putting him out of her arms made her shudder, and she strained him to her bosom with a convulsive grasp, as she went rapidly forward.”

“Witness, eternal God! Oh, witness that, from this hour, I will do what one man can to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!”

“Some jokes are less agreeable than others.”

“No; I mean, really, Tom is a good, steady, sensible, pious fellow. He got religion at a camp-meeting, four years ago; and I believe he really did get it. I’ve trusted him, since then, with everything I have,—money, house, horses,—and let him come and go round the country; and I always found him true and square in everything.”

″‘Ah, master trusted me, and I couldn’t,‘“—they told me about it.

“Ay, ay! women always say such things, cause they ha’nt no sort of calculation. Just show ‘em how many watches, feathers, and trinkets, one’s weight in gold would buy, and that alters the case, I reckon.”

“A very humane jurist once said, The worst use you can put a man to is to hang him. No; there is another use that a man can be put to that is WORSE!”

“There now, Eliza, it’s too bad for me to make you feel so, poor girl!” said he, fondly; “it’s too bad: O, how I wish you never had seen me—you might have been happy!”

“Then drawing his child on his knee, he gazed intently on his glorious dark eyes, and passed his hands through his long curls.”

“Patient!” said he, interrupting her; “haven’t I been patient? Did I say a word when he came and took me away, for no earthly reason, from the place where everybody was kind to me? I’d paid him truly every cent of my earnings,—and they all say I worked well.

“My master! and who made him my master? That’s what I think of—what right has he to me? I’m a man as much as he is. I’m a better man than he is. I know more about business than he does; I am a better manager than he is; I can read better than he can; I can write a better hand,—and I’ve learned it all myself, and no thanks to him,—I’ve learned it in spite of him; and now what right has he to make a dray-horse of me?—to take me from things I can do, and do better than he can, and put me to work that any horse can do? He tries to do it; he says he’ll bring me down and humble me, and he puts me to just the hardest, meanest and dirtiest work, on purpose!”

“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;—every chance he can get to insult and torment me, he takes.”

“What are you going to do? O, George, don’t do anything wicked; if you only trust in God, and try to do right, he’ll deliver you.”

“I an’t a Christian like you, Eliza; my heart’s full of bitterness; I can’t trust in God. Why does he let things be so?”

“That’s easy to say for people that are sitting on their sofas and riding in their carriages; but let ‘em be where I am, I guess it would come some harder. I wish I could be good; but my heart burns, and can’t be reconciled, anyhow. You couldn’t in my place,—you can’t now, if I tell you all I’ve got to say. You don’t know the whole yet.”

“I tell you, Eliza, that a sword will pierce through your soul for every good and pleasant thing your child is or has; it will make him worth too much for you to keep.”

“I won’t be taken, Eliza; I’ll die first! I’ll be free, or I’ll die!”

“What! our Tom?—that good, faithful creature!—been your faithful servant from a boy! O, Mr. Shelby!—and you have promised him his freedom, too,—you and I have spoken to him a hundred times of it. Well, I can believe anything now,—I can believe now that you could sell little Harry, poor Eliza’s only child!”

“My dear,” said Mrs. Shelby, recollecting herself, “forgive me. I have been hasty. I was surprised, and entirely unprepared for this;—but surely you will allow me to intercede for these poor creatures. Tom is a noble-hearted, faithful fellow, if he is black. I do believe, Mr. Shelby, that if he were put to it, he would lay down his life for you.”

“I have cared for them, instructed them, watched over them, and know all their little cares and joys, for years; and how can I ever hold up my head again among them, if, for the sake of a little paltry gain, we sell such a faithful, excellent, confiding creature as poor Tom, and tear from him in a moment all we have taught him to love and value?”

“I have taught them the duties of the family, of parent and child, and husband and wife; and how can I bear to have this open acknowledgment that we care for no tie, no duty, no relation, however sacred, compared with money?”

“I have told her that one soul is worth more than all the money in the world; and how will she believe me when she sees us turn round and sell her child?—sell him, perhaps, to certain ruin of body and soul!”

“This is God’s curse on slavery!—a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing!—a curse to the master and a curse to the slave!”

“I was a fool to think I could make anything good out of such a deadly evil. It is a sin to hold a slave under laws like ours,—I always felt it was,—I always thought so when I was a girl,—I thought so still more after I joined the church; but I thought I could gild it over,—I thought, by kindness, and care, and instruction, I could make the condition of mine better than freedom—fool that I was!”

“We don’t need them to tell us; you know I never thought that slavery was right—never felt willing to own slaves.”

“If I could only at least save Eliza’s child, I would sacrifice anything I have.”

“Why, not a cruel man, exactly, but a man of leather,—a man alive to nothing but trade and profit,—cool, and unhesitating, and unrelenting, as death and the grave. He’d sell his own mother at a good percentage—not wishing the old woman any harm, either.”

“I’ll go and see poor old Tom, God help him, in his distress! They shall see, at any rate, that their mistress can feel for and with them.”

“but mother won’t let him—she’s going to put on her little boy’s cap and coat, and run off with him, so the ugly man can’t catch him.”

“I’m a wicked girl to leave her so; but, then, I can’t help it. She said, herself, one soul was worth more than the world; and this boy has a soul, and if I let him be carried off, who knows what’ll become of it? It must be right: but, if it an’nt right, the Lord forgive me, for I can’t help doing it!”

“You must give my love to him, and tell him, if I never see him again,” she turned away, and stood with her back to them for a moment, and then added, in a husky voice, “tell him to be as good as he can, and try and meet me in the kingdom of heaven.”

“I say thus much, however, since appearances call for it, that I shall allow of no insinuations cast upon me, as if I were at all partner to any unfairness in this matter.”

“Her husband’s suffering and dangers, and the danger of her child, all blended in her mind, with a confused and stunning sense of the risk she was running, in leaving the only home she had ever known, and cutting loose from the protection of a friend whom she loved and revered.”

“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.”

“As a fire in her bones, the thought of the pursuer urged her on; and she gazed with longing eyes on the sullen, surging waters that lay between her and liberty.”

“you shall be redeemed as soon as I can any way bring together means.”

“Why, re’lly, she did seem to me to valley the child more ‘cause “t was sickly and cross, and plagued her;”

“Tend to yer soul!” repeated Tom, contemptuously; “take a bright lookout to find a soul in you,—save yourself any care on that score. If the devil sifts you through a hair sieve, he won’t find one.”

″‘Tan’t that you care one bit more, or have a bit more feelin’—it’is clean, sheer, dog meanness, wanting to cheat the devil and save your own skin;”

“Talents is different, you know. Now, Tom’s roarer when there’s any thumping or fighting to be done; but at lying he an’t good, Tom an’t,—ye see it don’ t come natural to him; but, Lord, if thar’ s a feller in the country that can swear to anything and everything, and put in all the circumstances and flourishes with a long face, and carry ‘t through better n I can, why, I’d like to see him, that’s all!”

“Feel too much! Am not I a woman,—a mother? Are we not both responsible to God for this poor girl? My God! lay not this sin to our charge.”

“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! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can’t give a warm supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!”

“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.”

“Obeying God never brings on public evils. I know it can’t. It’s always safest, all round, to do as He bids us.”

I tell you folks don’t run away when they are happy; and when they do run, poor creatures! they suffer enough with cold and hunger and fear, without everybody’s turning against them;

“You are safe; don’t be afraid.”

“You needn’t be afraid of anything; we are friends here, poor woman! Tell me where you came from, and what you want,” said she.

“I knew ‘t was no use of my trying to live, if they did it; for ‘t pears like this child is all I have.”

“Meanwhile, never fear, poor woman; put your trust in God; he will protect you.”

“Could I ever have loved you, had I not known you better than you know yourself?”

“My dear boys,” she said, softly and earnestly, “if our dear, loving little Henry looks down from heaven, he would be glad to have us do this. I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common person—to anybody that was happy; but I give them to a mother more heart-broken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his blessings with them!”

“nothin’ can go no furder than he lets it;—and thar’ s one thing I can thank him for. It’ s me that’ s sold and going down, and not you nur the chil’en. Here you’re safe;—what comes will come only on me; and the Lord, he’ll help me,—I know he will.”

“My good fellow,” said Mrs. Shelby, “I can’t give you anything to do you any good. If I give you money, it will only be taken from you. But I tell you solemnly, and before God, that I will keep track of you, and bring you back as soon as I can command the money;—and, till then, trust in God!”

“And be careful of yer speaking, Mas’r George. Young boys, when they comes to your age, is wilful, sometimes—it is natur they should be. But real gentlemen, such as I hopes you’ll be, never lets fall on words that isn’t ‘spectful to thar parents. Ye an’ t’fended, Mas’r George?”

“I should think you’d be ashamed to spend all your life buying men and women, and chaining them, like cattle! I should think you’d feel mean!” said George.

“Any man that owns a boy like that, and can’t find any better way o’ treating on him, deserves to lose him.”

“Treat ‘em like dogs, and you’ll have dogs’ works and dogs’ actions. Treat ‘em like men, and you’ll have men’s works.”

“Don’t quote Bible at me that way, Mr. Wilson,” said George, with a flashing eye, “don’t! for my wife is a Christian, and I mean to be, if ever I get to where I can; but to quote Bible to a fellow in my circumstances, is enough to make him give it up altogether. I appeal to God Almighty;—I’m willing to go with the case to Him, and ask Him if I do wrong to seek my freedom.

“My country again! Mr. Wilson, you have a country; but what country have I, or any one 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.”

″‘look at me, now. Don’t I sit before you, every way, just as much a man as you are? Look at my face,—look at my hands,—look at my body... why am I not a man, as much as anybody?”

“Why, sir, I’ve been so hungry that I have been glad to take the bones they threw to their dogs;”

″...and yet, when I was a little fellow, and laid awake whole nights and cried, it wasn’ t the hunger, it wasn’ t the whipping, I cried for. No, sir, it was for my mother and my sisters,—it was because I hadn’t a friend to love me on earth.”

“Gone, sir gone, with her child in her arms, the Lord only knows where;—gone after the north star; and when we ever meet, or whether we meet at all in this world, no creature can tell.”

″...for slavery always ends in misery.”

“My friend,” how can you, how dare you, carry on a trade like this? Look at those poor creatures! Here I am, rejoicing in my heart that I am going home to my wife and child; and the same bell which is a signal to carry me onward towards them will part this poor man and his wife forever. Depend upon it, God will bring you into judgment for this.

“My daughter” came naturally from the lips of Rachel Halliday; for hers was just the face and form that made “mother” seem the most natural word in the world.”

“She dreamed of a beautiful country,—a land, it seemed to her, of rest,—green shores, pleasant islands, and beautifully glittering water; and there, in a house which kind voices told her was a home, she saw her boy playing, free and happy child.”

“Then I mean to call you Uncle Tom, because, you see, I like you,”

“I want to make him happy.”

“Say so much for the shape of my head, so much for a high forehead, so much for arms, and hands, and legs, and then so much for education, learning, talent, honesty, religion!”

“Mamma, couldn’t I take care of you one night—just one? I know I shouldn’t make you nervous, and I shouldn’t sleep. I often lie awake nights, thinking—”

“I never complain myself—nobody knows what I endure. I feel it a duty to bear it quietly, and I do.”

“Men do get tired, naturally, of a complaining wife. But I’ve kept things to myself, and borne, and borne, till St. Clare has got in the way of thinking I can bear anything.”

“But Eva somehow always seems to put herself on an equality with every creature that comes near her. It’s a strange thing about the child. I never have been able to break her of it. St. Clare, I believe, encourages her in it.”

“Certainly, of course. I’m very particular in letting them have everything that comes convenient,—anything that doesn’t put one at all out of the way, you know. Mammy can make up her sleep, some time or other; there’s no difficulty about that. She’s the sleepiest concern that ever I saw; sewing, standing, or sitting, that creature will go to sleep, and sleep anywhere and everywhere. No danger but Mammy gets sleep enough. But this treating servants as if they were exotic flowers, or china vases, is really ridiculous,”

“Too much trouble,—laziness, cousin, laziness,—which ruins more souls than you can shake a stick at.”

“You ought to educate your slaves, and treat them like reasonable creatures,—like immortal creatures, that you’ve got to stand before the bar of God with.”

“Well, now, cousin, you’ve given us a good talk and done your duty; on the whole, I think the better of you for it. 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.”

“You would send them to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary or two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously.”

“Why, you know, papa,” she said, in a whisper, “cousin told me that God wants to have us; and he gives us everything, you know; and it isn’t much to do it, if he wants us to. It isn’t so very tiresome after all.”

“If I answer that question, I know you’ll be at me with half a dozen others, each one harder than the last; and I’m not a going to define my position. I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people’s glass houses, but I never mean to put up one for them to stone.”

“It’s pretty generally understood that men don’t aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.”

“O! Eliza, if these people only knew what a blessing it is for a man to feel that his wife and child belong to him!”

“Why, I feel rich and strong, though we have nothing but our bare hands.”

“Yes, though I’ve worked hard every day, till I am twenty-five years old, and have not a cent of money, nor a roof to cover me, nor a spot of land to call my own, yet, if they will only let me alone now, I will be satisfied,—thankful;”

“George stood with clenched hands and glowing eyes, and looking as any other man might look, whose wife was to be sold at auction, and son sent to a trader, all under the shelter of a Christian nation’s laws.”

“What we do we are conscience bound to do; we can do no other way.”

“People that have friends, and houses, and lands, and money, and all those things can’t love as we do, who have nothing but each other.”

“And your loving me,—why, it was almost like raising one from the dead! I’ve been a new man ever since!”

“But you haven’ t got us. We don’ t own your laws; we don’ t own your country; we stand here as free, under God’s sky, as you are; and, by the great God that made us, we’ll fight for our liberty till we die.”

“Get up, Tom. I’m not worth crying over.”

“These things sink into my heart, Tom,”

“My dear child, what do you expect? Here is a whole class,—debased, uneducated, indolent, provoking,—put, without any sort of terms or conditions, entirely into the hands of such people as the majority in our world are; people who have neither consideration nor self-control, who haven’t even an enlightened regard to their own interest,—for that’s the case with the largest half of mankind.”

“And he who goes the furthest, and does the worst, only uses within limits the power that the law gives him.”

“Now, an aristocrat, you know, the world over, has no human sympathies, beyond a certain line in society.”

“What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is!”

“There does not breathe on God’s earth a nobler-souled, more generous fellow, than Alfred, in all that concerns his equals;”

“Any man who thinks that human beings can, as a general thing, be made about as comfortable that way as any other, I wish he might try it. I’d buy the dog, and work him, with a clear conscience!”

“The slave-owner can whip his refractory slave to death,—the capitalist can starve him to death.”

“As to family security, it is hard to say which is the worst,—to have one’s children sold, or see them starve to death at home.”

“But it’s no kind of apology for slavery, to prove that it isn’t worse than some other bad thing.”

“The fact was, it was, after all, the THING that I hated— the using these men and women, the perpetuation of all this ignorance, brutality and vice,—just to make money for me!”

“There was,” said St. Clare, “a time in my life when I had plans and hopes of doing something in this world, more than to float and drift. I had vague, indistinct yearnings to be a sort of emancipator,—to free my native land from this spot and stain. All young men have had such fever-fits, I suppose, some time,—but then—”

“My mother used to tell me of a millennium that was coming, when Christ should reign, and all men should be free and happy.”

“Well, now,” said Marie, “I know it’s impossible to get along with some of these creatures. They are so bad they ought not to live. I don’t feel a particle of sympathy for such cases. If they’d only behave themselves, it would not happen.”

“I lost him the first cholera season. In fact, he laid down his life for me. For I was sick, almost to death; and when, through the panic, everybody else fled, Scipio worked for me like a giant, and actually brought me back into life again.”

“O, it’s a shame you ever had to go away from them!”

“It’s very important he should write,” said Eva, “because his mistress is going to send down money to redeem him, you know, papa; he told me they told him so.”

“For you to educate—didn’t I tell you? You’re always preaching about educating. I thought I would make you a present of a fresh-caught specimen, and let you try your hand on her, and bring her up in the way she should go.”

“That’s you Christians, all over!—you’ll get up a society, and get some poor missionary to spend all his days among just such heathen. But let me see one of you that would take one into your house with you, and take the labor of their conversion on yourselves! No; when it comes to that, they are dirty and disagreeable, and it’s too much care, and so on.”

″‘Topsy, you naughty girl, don’t you tell me a lie,—you stole that ribbon!’ ‘Missis, I declar for ‘t, I didn’t;—never seed it till dis yer blessed minnit.‘”

″‘Miss Eva has got the St. Clare blood in her, that’s plain. She can speak, for all the world, just like her papa,’ she said, as she passed out of the room.”

“Poor Topsy, why need you steal? You’re going to be taken good care of now. I’m sure I’d rather give you anything of mine, than have you steal it.”