Harriet Ann Jacobs

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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