Quotes by Harriet Ann Jacobs - Page 1

Death is better than slavery.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Death
Slavery
Than
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Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Community
Contagious
Cruelty
Literature
Uncivilized
Communities
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There are wrongs which even the grave does not bury.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Black
Doe
Injustice
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The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Concealed
Inquisition
Literature
Secret
Slavery
Secrets
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The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Girl
Atmosphere
Slave
Slave Girl
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When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Died
Mistress
Twelve
Years
Nearly
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Always it gave me a pang that my children had no lawful claim to a name.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Mom
Children
Hypocrite
Mother
Mom Always Me
Always Me Children
Mom Me Children
Claim
Gave
Lawful
Pang
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There are no bonds so strong as those which are formed by suffering together
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Strong
Suffering
Together
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My master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will. There is might in each.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Patriotism
Law
Slave Girl
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I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Childhood
Slave Girl
Years
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I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Childhood
Happy Childhood
Six
Slave
Till
Passed
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No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Adequate
Description
Giving
Literature
Slavery
Pen
Produced
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When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Babe
Four
Literature
Pounds
Premature
Weighed
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Lives that flash in sunshine, and lives that are born in tears, receive their hue from circumstances.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Hue
Sunshine
Tears
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The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Nature
Beautiful
Human Soul
Loveliness
Revive
Soul
Spring
Also
Apt
Came
Human
Her
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The war of my life had begun; and though one of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
War
Creatures
Powerless
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Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Class
Snakes
Weather
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When I was six years old, my mother died; and then, for the first time, I learned, by the talk around me, that I was a slave.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Died
First Time
Literature
Mother
Six
Slave
Years
Time Me First Time
Time Me Mother
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Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Shadow
Sorrow
Years
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Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Men
Father
Knowing
Southern
Trouble
Marry
Slaves
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Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Dawn
Sin
Sorrow
Shadows
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DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Children
Mistress
Years
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There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Kindness
Freedom
Attachment
Gains
Slave Girl
Control
Lover
Except
No Control
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DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Accustomed
Mistress
Dr
Flint
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The slave child had no thought for the morrow; but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Children
Slave Girl
Waiting
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The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Believe
Degradation
Vices
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There must be sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Practice
Principles
Sophistry
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If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Running
Jail
Locked
Locked Up
Slave
Unwilling
Years
Master
Promises
Whipped
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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.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Jealousy
Jealous
Cotton
Give Me
Giving
Mistress
Slave Girl
Life Me My Life
Master
Rest
Give
Grave
My Life
Opened
Till
Plantation
Rather
Unprincipled
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When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Girl
Men
Babe
Heart
Slavery
Terrible
Men Women Heart
Far
Heavier
New-Born
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Dr. Flint had sworn that he would make me suffer, to my last day, for this new crime against him, as he called it; and as long as he had me in his power he kept his word
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Long
New Day
Suffering
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Dr. Flint had sworn that he would make me suffer, to my last day, for this new crime against him, as he called it; and as long as he had me in his power he kept his word.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Crime
Dr
Flint
Word
Last
Suffer
Sworn
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For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Childhood
Grandmother
Years
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For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Childhood
Foul
Mistress
Principles
Pure
Destroy
Master
Images
Inculcated
Utmost
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But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Girl
Ignorant
Years
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But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Girl
Sad
Epoch
Foul
Ignorant
Slave
Young
Words
Began
Year
Ear
Master
Entered
Fifteenth
Import
Remain
Whisper
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There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Religion
Men
Blood
Christianity
Communion
Differences
Religious
Treasury
Between
Difference
Goes
Pays
Price
Table
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But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
New Year
Morning
Children
Mother
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Notwithstanding my grandmother's long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Block
Children
Horse
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But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Cold
Might
Mother
Next
Peculiar
Slave
Torn
Wish
Die
Before
Cabin
Often
Floor
Her
Next Morning
She
Sorrows
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If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Concealment
Convinced
Human Beings
Immortal
Impossible
Literature
Soul
Southern
Among
Beings
Fully
Plantation
Seem
Souls
Trader
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Could you have seen that mother clinging to her child, when they fastened the irons upon his wrists; could you have heard her heart-rending groans, and seen her bloodshot eyes wander wildly from face to face, vainly pleading for mercy; could you have witnessed that scene as I saw it, you would exclaim, Slavery is damnable!
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Children
Eye
Mother
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I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Daughter
Father
Son
White
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I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters.
Harriet Ann Jacobs / Writer
Children
Father
Lying
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Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotes - Page 1

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