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.

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.

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.

Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition.

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.

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.

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

No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.

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

The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear.

Death is better than slavery.

When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died.

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.

I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.

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.

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.

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.

The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.

When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.

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.

Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other.

One half of my life has put the other half in the grave.

There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.

Age makes all things greater after their death; a name comes to the tongue easier from the grave.

Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.

Many people are in a rut and a rut is nothing but a grave - with both ends kicked out.

I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!

An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; legions of angels can't confine me there.

The danger of that - and there's a grave danger that I, myself, have to be very aware of - is that you become so involved and intrigued in the language that sometimes you lose track that that is only a means to an aesthetic experience that the listener has to get.

But I think that the spirit of protectionism would be the grave of European cinema. You cannot protect something by building a fence around it and thinking that this will help it survive.

A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.

Two aged men, that had been foes for life, Met by a grave, and wept - and in those tears They washed away the memory of their strife; Then wept again the loss of all those years.

All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

If Roosevelt were alive today, he'd turn over in his grave.

I'll only stop singing when I'm in my grave.

Bad leadership during the past years has cast on our Party the shadow of great and grave burdens.

Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.

Teach me to live, that I may dread The grave as little as my bed.

We pacifists have not ceased to point to the grave danger of armaments and to insist on their curtailment.

I should like these few words to be read over the grave when my body is placed in the earth; for though it is possible I may be present and conscious of what is going on, I shall not be able to communicate.

Frankly, despite my horror of the press, I'd love to rise from the grave every ten years or so and go buy a few newspapers.

We knew we were talking about spies. I knew he knew I knew. I was digging my own grave.

A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.