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.

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.

Lives that flash in sunshine, and lives that are born in tears, receive their hue from circumstances.

My master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will. There is might in each.

Always it gave me a pang that my children had no lawful claim to a name.

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.

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.