Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

It’s a free country, sir; the man’s mine, and I do what I please with him,—that’s it!”

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

“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.

No matter how kind her mistress is,—no matter how much she loves her home; beg her not to go back,—for slavery always ends in misery.

But who, sir, makes the trader? Who is most to blame? The enlightened, cultivated, intelligent man, who supports the system of which the trader is the inevitable result, or the poor trader himself? You make the public statement that calls for his trade, that debauches and depraves him, till he feels no shame in it; and in what are you better than he?

as if we could be compared, why, it’s impossible! Now, St. Clare really has talked to me as if keeping Mammy from her husband was like keeping me from mine. There’s no comparing in this way. Mammy couldn’t have the feelings that I should.

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 a religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.”

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.”

Dodo stood looking after the two children. One had given him money; and one had given him what he wanted far more,—a kind word, kindly spoken.

“put on the steam, fasten down the escape-valve, and sit on it, and see where you’ll land.”

if we want to give sight to the blind, we must be willing to do as Christ did,—call them to us, and put our hands on them.”

I’ve lost everything,—wife, and children, and home, and a kind Mas’r,—and he would have set me free, if he’d only lived a week longer; 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!”

To your fathers, freedom was the right of a nation to be a nation. To him, it is the right of a man to be a man, and not a brute;

good never comes of wickedness.