FROM THE PAGES OF UNCLE TOM’S CABIN

“Tom is an uncommon fellow; he is certainly worth that sum anywhere—steady, honest, capable, manages my whole farm like a clock.” (page 3)

 

Eliza made her desperate retreat across the river just in the dusk of twilight. The gray mist of evening, rising slowly from the river, enveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and the swollen current and floundering masses of ice presented a hopeless barrier between her and her pursuer. (page 62)

 

“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.” (page 79)

 

“All men are free and equal in the grave, if it comes to that.” (page 113)

 

“As to putting them on any sort of equality with us, you know, 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. It’s a different thing altogether,—of course it is,—and yet St. Clare pretends not to see it. And just as if Mammy could love her dirty little babies as I love Eva!” (page 172)

 

“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 a religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.” (page 181)

“I’ve felt that I would be glad to die, if my dying could stop all this misery. I would die for them, Tom, if I could.” (page 272)

 

“My soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t bought it,—ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it.” (page 353)

 

“I an’t a grain afeard to die. I’d as soon die as not.Ye may whip me, starve me, burn me,—it’ll only send me sooner where I want to go.” (page 375)

 

Liberty!—electric word! What is it? Is there anything more in it than a name—a rhetorical flourish? Why, men and women of America, does your heart’s blood thrill at that word, for which your fathers bled, and your braver mothers were willing that their noblest and best should die? Is there anything in it glorious and dear for a nation, that is not also glorious and dear for a man? (page 378)