"Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live? The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest. But to live, — to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling gradually smothered, — this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after hour, — this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman."
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Novelists from the United StatesAbolitionistsWomen authors from the United StatesSaintsAnglicans from the United States
Original Language: English
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Ch. 38 The Victory
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe
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Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (14 June 1811 – 1 July 1896) was an American abolitionist and writer, most famous as the author of the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
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