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… - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Everyone confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances drive them to do.

I did not write it. (Uncle Tom's Cabin) God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.

Has there ever been a child like Eva? Yes, there have been ; but their names are always on gravestones, and their sweet smiles, their heavenly eyes, their singular words and ways, are among the buried treasures of yearning hearts. In how many families do you hear the legend that all the goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms of one who is not I It is as if Heaven had an especial band of angels, whose office it was to sojourn for a season here, and en dear to them the wayward human heart, that they might bear it upward with them in their homeward flight. When you see that deep, spiritual light in the eye — when the little soul reveals itself in words sweeter and wiser than the ordinary words of children — hope not to retain that child ; for the seal of Heaven is on it, and the light of immortality looks out from its eyes.