So we go, so little knowing what we touch and what touches us as we talk! We drop out a common piece of news, "Mr. So-and-so is dead, Miss Such-a-one is married, such a ship has sailed," and lo, on our right hand or on our left, some heart has sunk under the news silently - gone down in the great ocean of Fate, without even a bubble rising to tell its drowning pang. And this - God help us! - is what we call living!
Harriet Beecher StoweIt is generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.
Harriet Beecher StoweFor how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all oneโs feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions, - pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.
Harriet Beecher StoweHow, then, shall a Christian bear fruit? By efforts and struggles to obtain that which is freely given; by meditations on watchfulness, on prayer, on action, on temptation, and on dangers? No, there must be a full concentration of the thoughts and affections on Christ; a complete surrender of the whole being to him; a constant looking to him for grace.
Harriet Beecher StoweTrue love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life; and homely services rendered for love's sake have in them a poetry that is immortal.
Harriet Beecher Stowe