Harriet Jacobs Quotes

[Describing slavery:] ... a cruel war against human nature itself.

I think slavery is the next thing to hell. If a person would send another into bondage, he would, it appears to me, be bad enough to send him into hell if he could.

I will not remain silent, resigned to watch as my fellow prisoners collapse under the strain of slavery-like conditions.

The real world is horrible.

While we yearn for peace, we live in a world burdened with hunger, pain, anguish, loneliness, sickness, and sorrow.

Humanity either makes, or breeds, or tolerates all its afflictions.

These circumstances of Cruelty to these People render the Persons who exercise it disagreeable, nay odious to me. When a Set of People can sit down enjoying all the Luxuries of Life without feeling the least Sensation or Compunction for the Sufferings of those poor Wretches whose Lives are rendered Miserable and Constitutions destroyed for those Purposes, I must conclude them Obdurate, Selfish, and Unfeeling to the greatest Degree imaginable. At what an Expense of Life and Happiness do we eat Rice and Sugar! One thing more I must add, that their Diet is almost entirely on Rice and sweet Potatoes as they are allowed Meat but once a Year.

So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to the 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.

Slavery is the next thing to hell.

This is what it means to be a slave; to be abused and bear it; compelled by violence to suffer wrong.

I cannot tell how much my heart suffered for my people while at Leavenworth.

I've seen the hell these people go through.

It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf.

I sleep in peace, even if only in the company of lice, behind bars. The same could not be said of my incarcerators though they sleep in warm beds, next to their wives, in their homes.

There are people who are suffering beyond description. They are innocent people, they didn't bring this upon themselves. They are the victims of the sins of other people. And while it's hard to see, it's important to understand that these people exist.

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

When one person is enslaved, we're all enslaved.

No blessing, no good, can follow in the path trodden by slavery.

I'll tell you one thing, it's a cruel, cruel world.

The world is a heartbreaking place, without any question.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

Oh eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears; O life, no life, but lively form of death; Oh world, no world, but mass of public wrongs.

I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress.

There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.

Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.