12 YEARS A SLAVE BOOK QUOTES

“I had been thus engaged for some minutes, when suddenly a boy entered the room and informed me that dinner was ready. My heart leaped for joy at this intelligence.”

“I was now left entirely alone for several hours, and had time to look about me and make up my mind as to my future course.”

“This despair, into which I was thus thrown, grew more intense with each succeeding hour.”

“I felt as if I were in a land of strangers, a country of unknown people who spoke an unknown tongue.”

“Soon after nightfall the dead body of a slave, who had died of exhaustion in the prison-yard, was brought in and laid down upon the bare floor.”

“I resolved never to be taken alive; for I believed that to be carried back to slavery was tantamount to going to hell.”

“I saw this notorious character take up my well-worn pencil-case, examine it, laughingly ask the price, and then fill it with tobacco.”

“The negroes, in whose minds superstition readily takes root, firmly believed that ‘pats baggage’ would bring us good luck.”

“Never did they return from their expeditions but they brought back tidings of licentiousness on the part of the white men.”

“The sobriety of the blacks, their simplicity of thought and kindness of heart, appealed to me with peculiar force.”

“The fugitive slave bills were passed, and the danger of capture by slaveholders greatly increased.”

“His was an odious character; I felt that I could almost kill him if I had an opportunity.” FAMOUS QUOTES ABOUT FORBIDDEN LOVE

“I was now convinced that there were men in the state of New York who, without the least compunction, would as soon sell a fugitive slave as they would a horse or an ox.”

“The man who had kindly written the letter would have given shelter to a were-wolf, much more to a poor panting fugitive like myself.”

“Though I had been in ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave,’ and thought I had witnessed much of the cruelty and wickedness of slaveholders, I was little prepared for the revelations of the store.”

“Time moves slowly with a slave, and days are ages.”

“The slaves in that part of the country led a rather more comfortable life than those in Maryland, Virginia, or the Carolinas.”

“I was determined that nothing they could say or do should induce me to kill or injure the poor dog.”

“They did all they could to excite his anger, and between them they completely infuriated the poor man.”

“He patted the plank of the bridge, and comically informed them that they ‘would occasionally see him bounding over it.'”

“When they had taken off his exterior garments and drawn over his loins a human skullcap, a pair of loose trowsers, and a coarse shirt without a spear or collar.”

“Each one was thoroughly armed; and a more villainous looking set of desperadoes I never beheld than these wild sons of the wilderness.”

“It so happened that a number of white men had assembled there, either attracted by curiosity, or from a desire to learn something respecting the laws and regulations of slavery.”