Frederick Douglass: “Her face was made of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music.”

I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.

We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.

This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.

Land is not worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him.