Quotes by 19th-century Women

A great many times in this world, the hardest work we are given is just to sit to one side and neither speak, nor act. It is then prayer becomes an unspeakable blessing.

Fannie Ellsworth Newberry

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

The more I see of Italy and her treasures, the more I see paganism in Christianity...

Henrietta Szold

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

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

Evalyn Walsh McLean

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

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

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

Florence Foster Jenkins

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'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

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

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

Bettina Riddle von Hutten

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.

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

Janet Erskine Stuart

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

I had the endurance but not the brute strength that must be coupled with it. No woman has this combination. That's why I say none of my sex will ever accomplish that particular stunt.

Annette Kellerman

A system is said to be coherent if every fact in the system is related every other fact in the system by relations that are not merely conjunctive. A deductive system affords a good example of a coherent system.

I am sure that it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains. One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness.

And I wasn't a journalist any more than I was a trained nurse.

The night of trouble is at times so dark that the interwoven gold with which Providence relieves the woof of calamity remains undiscovered.

An idea is our visual reaction to something seen - in real life, in our memory, in our imagination, in our dreams.

To say in print what she thinks is the last thing the woman novelist or journalist is so rash as to attempt…Her publishers are not women.

Elizabeth Robins

I think Hemingway's [book] titles should be awarded first prize in any contest. Each of them is a poem, and their mysterious power over readers contributes to Hemingway's success. His titles have a life of their own, and they have enriched the American vocabulary.

I wish I were a brewer's horse
Five quarters of a year;
I'd place my head where was my tail,
And drink up all the beer.

Catherine Sinclair