Quotes from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Reader, did you ever hate? I hope not. I never did but once; and I trust I never shall again. Somebody has called it "the atmosphere of hell"; and I believe it is so.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“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, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“God judges men by their hearts, not by the color of their skins.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“My Master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will. There is might in each.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Would that I had more ability! But my heart is so full, and my pen is so weak!”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“The brightest skies are always foreshadowed by dark clouds”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“There are wrongs which even the grave does not bury.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“He grew vexed and asked if poverty and hardships with freedom, were not preferable to our treatment in slavery...No, I will not stay. Let them bring me back. We don't die but once.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“the scripture says "oppression makes it even a wise man mad"...”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Why allow the tendrils of the heart to twine around objects which may at any moment be wrenched away”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“No, I did not think of him. When a man is hunted like a wild beast he forgets there is a God, a heaven. He forgets every thing in his struggle to get beyond the reach of the bloodhounds.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“They all spoke kindly of my dead mother, who had been a slave merely in name, but in nature was noble and womanly.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Women are considered of no value, unless they continually increase their owner's stock. They are put on a par with animals. This same master shot a woman through the head, who had run away and been brought back to him. No one called him to account for it. If a slave resisted being whipped, the bloodhounds were unpacked, and set upon him, to tear his flesh from his bones. The master who did these things was highly educated, and styled a perfect gentleman. He also boasted the name and standing of a Christian, though Satan never had a truer follower. I”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“I resolved not to be conquered again.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Satan's church is here below; Up to God's free church I hope to go.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“What does he know of the half-starved wretches toiling from dawn till dark on the plantations? of mothers shrieking for their children, torn from their arms by slave traders? of young girls dragged down into moral filth? of pools of blood around the whipping post? of hounds trained to tear human flesh?”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“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 white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system. Their talk is of blighted cotton crops--not of the blight on their children's souls.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“There are no bonds so strong as those which are formed by suffering together.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Ah, if he had ever been a slave he would have known how difficult it was to trust white men.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Take courage, Willie; brighter days will come by and by.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“I admit that the black man is inferior. But what is it that makes him so? It is the ignorance in which white men compel him to live;”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Do you know that I have a right to do as I like with you,—that I can kill you, if I please?" "You”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“They had never felt slavery; and, when it was too late, they were convinced of its reality. When”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Reader, did you ever hate? I hope not. I never did but once; and I trust I never shall again. Somebody has called it "the atmosphere of hell;" and I believe it is so.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“As I was about to open the street door, Sally laid her hand on my shoulder, and said, "Linda, is you gwine all”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“It seemed as if I were born to bring sorrow on all who befriended me, and that was the bitterest drop in the bitter cup of my life.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

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