Quotes by 19th-century Women

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

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

Agatha Christie

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

Jeanette Rankin

I know heaps of quotations, so I can always make quite a fair show of knowledge.

When at night I go to sleep,
Fourteen angels watch do keep.
Two stand here beside me,
Two stand there to guide me…
Two more light the path to heaven!

Her own excited feelings had magnified it in length, and breadth, and height — had made a molehill into a mountain...

Ellen Wood (author)

It is probable that the lemon is the most valuable of all fruit for preserving health.

With a generous endowment of motherhood provided by legislation, with all laws against voluntary motherhood and education in its methods repealed, with the feminist ideal of education accepted in home and school, and with all special barriers removed in every field of human activity, there is no reason why woman should not become almost a human thing. It will be time enough then to consider whether she has a soul.

Crystal Eastman

It is not so much what we say or do that educates; what really educates is who we are.

Janet Erskine Stuart

There is a passion of reverence, almost of pity, mingling with the love of an honest man for a pure girl, which makes it the most exquisite, perhaps, of all human sentiments.

We understood each other at once. And understanding is so much better than loving.

Bettina Riddle von Hutten

A gentleman can always be told by the way he speaks to those that he thinks are his inferiors in some respect. His equals he does not wish to offend, his superiors he does not dare to offend, and of those whom he considers his inferiors he would be all the more considerate.

Fanny Jackson Coppin

At some future time I shall see New York the artist's ground. I think you will create an American School.

There's Conservatives an' they want to make things better by keepin' 'em jus' like what they are now. An' there's Lib'rals an' they want to make things better by alterin' them jus' a bit, but not so's anyone'd notice, an' there's communists an' they want to make things better by killin' everyone but themselves.

Richmal Crompton

Even if I do not see the fruits, the struggle has been worthwhile. If my life has taught me anything, it is that one must fight.

There are four types of students: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer, and the sieve. The sponge, which soaks up everything; the funnel, which takes in at one end and lets out at the other; the strainer, which permits the wine to pass out and retains the lees; and the sieve, which separates the bran from the fine flour.

Ethel Percy Andrus

People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing.

Florence Foster Jenkins

When the author Somerset Maugham told her he had to be leaving the dinner table early because he had to 'look after his youth':

Next time do bring him. We adore those sort of people.

Helen Maud Holt

The most stupendous system of organized robbery known has been that of the church towards woman, a robbery that has not only taken her self-respect but all rights of person; the fruits of her own industry; her opportunities of education; the exercise of her judgment, her own conscience, her own will.

Matilda Joslyn Gage

A lady could do, so I was told, just about nothing that she might want to do except attend all parties.

Evalyn Walsh McLean

Some sort of false logic has crept into our schools, for the people whom I have seen doing housework or cooking know nothing of botany or chemistry, and the people who know botany and chemistry do not cook or sweep. The conclusion seems to be, if one knows chemistry she must not cook or do housework.

Ellen Swallow Richards

To a fellow pianist:

Very well, my dear. You continue to play Bach your way and I'll continue to play him his way.

Wanda Landowska

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
Toil on, poor heart, unceasingly;
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A truth and noonday light to thee.

Ellen Sturgis Hooper

Is life worth living? Aye, with the best of us, Heights of us, depths of us- Life is the test of us!

Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

I eat till, honest, I felt every button on all my clo'es. The folks where we were stayin' were the old-fashioned hospitable kind; they didn't let you off till your jaws struck work and wouldn't wag no more.

Laura E. Richards