To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.
Harriet Beecher StoweRead
Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the disconnect between human capacity for violence and the discomfort we feel when confronted with it.
Harriet Beecher Stowe's quote reflects on the paradox of human nature, suggesting that while people are capable of committing acts of extreme violence and cruelty, they often shy away from hearing about or witnessing these acts. It points out a moral inconsistency where individuals may perform heinous acts but are emotionally unable to withstand the reality of those actions when presented to them.
Themes
ViolenceCrueltyHuman NatureDisconnectMorality
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on the impact of war on society, this quote can illustrate the moral dilemmas surrounding violence.
More from Harriet Beecher Stowe
All quotes βWhat's your hurry?" Because now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in," said Miss Ophelia.
Harriet Beecher StoweRead
So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women.
Harriet Beecher StoweRead
It is generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.
Harriet Beecher StoweRead
Death! Strange that there should be such a word, and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be living, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day, and the next be gone, utterly gone, and forever!
Harriet Beecher StoweRead
Once, in an age, God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false imagining, an unreal character, but, looking through all the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature, β loves, not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be.
Harriet Beecher StoweRead
Similar quotes
Dominique as Gail looks at her "... there is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself an object of reverence."
Ayn RandRead
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.
CrowfootRead
I never wish to be easily defined.
Franz KafkaRead
I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. It might be dying, and there might be a lot of dirt in the air you breathe, but this is where it's happening.
John LennonRead
Whoever you hate will end up in your family. You don't like gays? _x000D_ You're gonna have a gay son. You don't like Puerto Ricans? Your _x000D_ daughter's gonna come home with Livin' La Vida Loca!
Chris RockRead
I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.
Janet FitchRead