Harriet Ann Jacobs Quotations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death is better than slavery.

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

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