Frances Harper Quotes

• We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.

  Frances Harper

  Soul, Humanity, Unity

  105 Copy quote

• Slavery is dead, but the spirit which animated it still lives.

  Frances Harper

  Slavery, Spirit, Animated

  81 Copy quote

• If we have had no past, it is well for us to look hopefully to the future - for the shadows bear the promise of a brighter coming day.

  Frances Harper

  Hope, Past, Promise

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frances Smith Foster (1990). “A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader”, p.124, Feminist Press at CUNY

  54 Copy quote

• So close is the bond between man and woman that you can not raise one without lifting the other. The world can not move ahead without woman's sharing in the movement, and to help give a right impetus to that movement is woman's highest privilege.

  Frances Harper

  Women, Moving, Giving

  54 Copy quote

• The respect that is only bought by gold is not worth much.

  Frances Harper

  Respect, Gold

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frances Smith Foster (1990). “A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader”, p.104, Feminist Press at CUNY

  56 Copy quote

• A government which can protect and defend its citizens from wrong and outrage and does not is vicious. A government which would do it and cannot is weak; and where human life is insecure through either weakness or viciousness in the administration of law, there must be a lack of justice and where this is wanting, nothing can make up the deficiency.

  Frances Harper

  Insecure, Law, Government

  39 Copy quote

• My hands were weak, but I reached them out To feebler ones than mine, and over the shadow of my life Stole the light of a peace divine.

  Frances Harper

  Hands, Light, Justice

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, “Go Work In My Vineyard”

  83 Copy quote

• I find, by close observation, that the mothers are the levers which move in education. The men talk about it . . . but the women work most for it.

  Frances Harper

  Mother, Moving, Son

  55 Copy quote

• I belong to this race, and when it is down I belong to a down race; when it is up I belong to a risen race.

  Frances Harper

  Race, Risen

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frances Smith Foster (1990). “A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader”, p.128, Feminist Press at CUNY

  35 Copy quote

• But two things are wanting in American civilization - a keener and deeper, broader and tenderer sense of justice - a sense of humanity, which shall crystallize into the life of a nation the sentiment that justice, simple justice, is the right, not simply of the strong and powerful, but of the weakest and feeblest of all God's children.

  Frances Harper

  Strong, Children, Powerful

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frances Smith Foster (1990). “A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader”, p.220, Feminist Press at CUNY

  42 Copy quote

• Apparent failure may hold in its rough shell the germs of a success that will blossom in time, and bear fruit throughout eternity.

  Frances Harper

  Success, Shells, May

  33 Copy quote

• Oh, could slavery exist long if it did not sit on a commercial throne?

  Frances Harper

  Long, Thrones, Slavery

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frances Smith Foster (1990). “A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader”, p.45, Feminist Press at CUNY

  33 Copy quote

• The true aim of female education should be, not a development of one or two, but all the faculties of the human soul, because no perfect womanhood is developed by imperfect culture.

  Frances Harper

  Two, Perfect, Soul

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frances Smith Foster (1990). “A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader”, p.109, Feminist Press at CUNY

  36 Copy quote

• I do not think the mere extension of the ballot a panacea for all the ills of our national life. What we need to-day is not simplymore voters, but better voters.

  Frances Harper

  Thinking, Needs, Politics

  23 Copy quote

• It is said that the Negro is ignorant. But why is he ignorant? It comes with ill grace from a man who has put out my eyes to makea parade of my blindness,--to reproach me for my poverty when he has wronged me of my money.... If he is poor, what has become of the money he has been earning for the last two hundred and fifty years? Years ago it was said cotton fights and cotton conquers for American slavery. The Negro helped build up that great cotton power in the South, and in the North his sigh was in the whir of its machinery, and his blood and tears upon the warp and woof of its manufactures.

  Frances Harper

  Eye, Fighting, Men

  30 Copy quote

• Intense love is often akin to intense suffering.

  Frances Harper

  Love, Suffering, Intense

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frances Smith Foster (1990). “A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader”, p.109, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has behind him agesof education, dominion, civilization, and Christianity, if he stands opposed to the passage of a national education bill, whose purpose is to secure education to the children of those who were born under the shadow of institutions which made it a crime to read.

  Frances Harper

  Children, Reading, Heart

  27 Copy quote

• A room to myself is a luxury that I do not always enjoy.

  Frances Harper

  Luxury, Rooms, Enjoy

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frances Smith Foster (1990). “A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader”, p.133, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• Every mother should endeavor to be a true artist.

  Frances Harper

  Mother, Artist, Should

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frances Smith Foster (1990). “A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader”, p.286, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• a towering intellect, grand in its achievements, and glorious in its possibilities, may, with the moral and spiritual faculties held in abeyance, be one of the most dangerous and mischievous forces in the world.

  Frances Harper

  Spiritual, Achievement, World

  13 Copy quote

• No man can feel the iron which enters another man's soul.

  Frances Harper

  Men, Compassion, Iron

  Frances E.W. Harper (1990). “Iola Leroy: Or Shadows Uplifted”, p.263, Oxford University Press

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• As the saffron tints and crimson flushes of morn herald the coming day, so the social and political advancement which woman has already gained bears the promise of the rising of the full-orbed sun of emancipation. The result will be not to make home less happy, but society more holy.

  Frances Harper

  Home, Political, Promise

  22 Copy quote

• One needs both leisure and money to make a successful book.

  Frances Harper

  Book, Successful, Needs

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1969). “Lola Leroy: Shadows Uplifted”, p.240, Library of Alexandria

  6 Copy quote

• True politeness is to social life what oil is to machinery, a thing to oil the ruts and grooves of existence. False politeness can shine without warming and glitter without vivifying.

  Frances Harper

  Oil, Shining, Ruts

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frances Smith Foster (1990). “A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader”, p.397, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• Amid ancient lore the Word of God stands unique and pre-eminent. Wonderful in its construction, admirable in its adaptation, it contains truths that a child may comprehend, and mysteries into which angels desire to look.

  Frances Harper

  Bible, Children, Angel

  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frances Smith Foster (1990). “A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader”, p.98, Feminist Press at CUNY

  18 Copy quote

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