Frederick Douglass: “My joys have far exceeded my sorrows, and my friends have brought me far more than my enemies have taken from me.”

The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.

Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.

My grandmother was all the world to me, and the thought of being separated from her was a most unwelcome suggestion to my affections and hopes.

It only abolished slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.