Quote

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.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Harriet Beecher Stowe
Age: 85 †
Born: 1811
Born: June 14
Died: 1896
Died: July 1
Author
Novelist
Poet
Short Story Writer
Writer
Litchfield (town)
Connecticut
Christopher Crowfield
Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe
Enrieta Elizabeth Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elizabeth Beecher
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe
Better
Undertake
Human
Inconsistent
Humans
Ideal
Come
Ideals
Thing
Short
Especially
Nature
Seems

More quotes by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Image
There is no phase of the Italian mind that has not found expression in its music.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
In the old times, women did not get their lives written, though I don't doubt many of them were much better worth writing than the men's.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
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.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
Behold! thou hast one more chance! Strive for immortal glory!
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
If you were not already my dearly loved husband I should certainly fall in love with you.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
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.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
O, because I have had only that kind of benevolence which consists in lying on a sofa, and cursing the church and clergy for not being martyrs and confessors. One can see, you know, very easily, how others ought to be martyrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
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.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
Your little child is the only true democrat.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
Friendships are discovered rather than made.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first. Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
Humankind above all is lazy.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
If I am to write, I must have a room to myself, which shall be my room.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Image
Nobody had ever instructed him that a slave-ship, with a procession of expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely-packed heathen are brought over to enjoy the light of the Gospel.
Harriet Beecher Stowe