Harriet Beecher Stowe Quotes

Lazy people tend not to take chances, but express themselves by tearing down other's work.

We love the old saints, missionaries, martyrs, and reformers. Our Luthers, Bunyans, Wesleys and Asburys, etc... We will write their biographies, reverence their memories, frame their epitaphs, and build their monuments. We will do anything except imitate them. We cherish the last drop of their blood, but watch carefully over the first drop of our own.

We all have known good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up. Now, may the good God pardon all good men!

The man who acts the least, upbraids the most.

Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

There are a still lot of people in today's church who can easily identify the idolatry outside the church and are pretty proud of the fact that they are not like them. And yet, we are far too slow to recognize the idolatry inside the church and more painfully, the idolatry inside our hearts.

Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business.

... what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.

Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.

They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy evil, that they may no longer have have it to regret.

For those of us who got into good colleges or the professions, did we stand up to that high school history teacher who told us some ridiculous lie about American history and say, "That's a ridiculous lie. You're an idiot"? No. We said, "All right, I'll keep quiet, and I'll write it in the exam and I'll think, yes, he's an idiot." And it's easy to say and believe things that improve your self-image and your career and that are in other ways beneficial to yourselves.

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

Speak kind words to mankind and the unkind will attack you. Speak common sense using all your senses, and you will attacked by the senseless. Speak truth and you will be attacked by the untruthful. Speak about absolutely nothing and absolutely nothing will speak back, but then nothing at all will ever change.

I realized that my righteous indignation was a form of entertainment for me. I loved getting pissed off at injustice. I didn't do anything about it, I just liked the feeling of being pissed off.

I despise followers of any kind, especially those who follow me.

And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.

I will not say it is not Christian to make beads of others faults, and tell them over every day; I say it is infernal. If you want to know how the Devil feels, you do know, if you are such an one.

I'm a member and preacher to that church where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way.

don't you hate people who say they're not complaining and then complain?

Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it.

Mock mockers after that That would not lift a hand maybe To help good, wise or great To bar that foul storm out, for we Traffic in mockery.

It's funny - people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and THEY go to CHURCH.

People like you should be stopped, Mr. Woodrow,' she mused aloud, with a puzzled shake of her wise head. 'You think you're solving the world's problems but actually you're the problem.

When men are about to commit, or sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable.

The long days seduce all thought away, and we lie like the lizards in the sun, postponing our lives indefinitely.