“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers.”

Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.

The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.

A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.

A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.

Truth is proper and beautiful in all times and in all places.

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

One and God make a majority.

The ballot is the only safety.

A slave is someone who sits down, and waits for someone to free them.

The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle.

I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I ever had, till I became my own master.

A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.

I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity.

The man who is right is a majority. He who has God and conscience on his side, has a majority against the universe.

Do not ever read books about versification: no poet ever learnt it that way. If you are going to be a poet, it will come to you naturally and you will pick up all you need from reading poetry.

I revise the manuscript till I can’t read it any longer, then I get somebody to type it. Then I revise the typing. Then it’s retyped again. Then there’s a third typing, which is the final one. Nothing should then remain that offends the eye.

There is no book so bad that some good can not be got out of it.

A diary need not be a dreary chronicle of one’s movements; it should aim rather at giving salient account of some particular episode, a walk, a book, a conversation.

To whom do I give my new elegant little book? Cui dono lepidum novum libellum?

A book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf – at any rate it is safer from criticism.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.