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Frances Harper Biography

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 – February 22, 1911) was an African-American abolitionist, suffragist, poet and author. She was also active in other types of social reform and was a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which advocated the federal government taking a role in progressive reform.

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Frances Harper Quotes

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.

Agesof, Children, Heart, Purpose, Reading, Secure

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.

False, Glitter, Oil, Shining, Social

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.

Government, Insecure, Law, Outrage, Weak

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.

Day, Hope, Past, Promise, Shadows

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

Compassion, Enters, Iron, Man, Men

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

Bear, Hold, May, Shells, Success, Time

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.

Eye, Fighting, Makea, Men, Power, Tears

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.

Culture, Education, Faculties, Perfect, Soul, Two

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.

Extension, Needs, Panacea, Politics, Thinking, Voters

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.

Abeyance, Achievement, Glorious, Moral, Spiritual, World

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.

Children, Humanity, Life, Nation, Powerful, Strong

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

Book, Leisure, Make, Needs, Successful

I like the character of Moses. He is the first disunionist we read of in the Jewish Scriptures.

Character, Firsts, Like, Moses, Read, Scripture

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

Animated, Dead, Lives, Slavery, Spirit

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.

Belong, Down, Race, Risen

Every mother should endeavor to be a true artist.

Artist, Endeavor, Mother, Should, True

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.

Education, Mother, Move, Moving, Son, Work

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

Bought, Gold, Respect, Worth

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.

Hands, Justice, Light, Reached, Stole, Weak