Quotes by 19th-century Women

Marie Curie

Queen Victoria

Agatha Christie

Virginia Woolf

Florence Nightingale

Emily Dickinson

Helen Keller

Most of man's problems upon this planet, in the long history of the race, have been met and solved either partially or as a whole by experiment based on common sense and carried out with courage.

Frances Perkins

My dance is a sacred poem in which each movement is a word and whose every word is underlined by music. The temple in which I dance can be vague or faithfully reproduced, for I am the temple.

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.

Ethel Barrymore

My door was open part of the time, and part of the time I tried to get a nap and their voices annoyed me, and I closed it. I kept it open in summer more or less, and closed in winter.

When a woman behaves like a man, why doesn't she behave like a nice man?

I was a rebellious child, a rebellious lover, a rebellious couturière — a real devil.

Sometimes when I get home at night in Washington I feel as though I had been in a great traffic jam.

Lord Aberdeen was quite touched when I told him I was so attached to the dear, dear Highlands and missed the fine hills so much. There is a great peculiarity about the Highlands and Highlanders; and they are such a chivalrous, fine, active people.

I have always fought for ideas — until I learned that it isn't ideas but grief, struggle, and flashes of vision which enlighten.

Margaret Caroline Anderson

A great discovery does not leap completely achieved from the brain of the scientist, as Minerva sprang, all panoplied, from the head of Jupiter; it is the fruit of accumulated preliminary work.

I tasted - careless - then -
I did not know the Wine
Came once a World - Did you?
Oh, had you told me so -
This Thirst would blister - easier - now

Emily Dickinson

When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty to them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has almost the embodiment of a prayer.

Julia Margaret Cameron

I was in Deadwood at the time and on hearing of the killing made my way at once to the scene of the shooting and found that my friend had been killed by McCall.

Kansas had better stop raising corn and begin raising hell.

Mary Elizabeth Lease

To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

I did not use paint. I made myself up morally.

Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in their best light.

Lady Randolph Churchill

Reality even when it is sad is better than illusions. Illusions are at the mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men.

Science is a tool by which men will build their future. The future will depend on man's use of his tool.

Eleanor Roosevelt

The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe — how to observe — what symptoms indicate improvement — what the reverse — which are of importance — which are of none — which are the evidence of neglect — and of what kind of neglect.

Florence Nightingale

When all is said and done, monotony may after all be the best condition for creation.

Lady Margaret Sackville

To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious.

Agatha Christie

So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.

Loving a child doesn't mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult.

Nadia Boulanger

Men and women are like right and left hands; it doesn't make sense not to use both.

Jeanette Rankin