Quotes by 19th-century Women

O power of Love, O wondrous mystery!
How is my dark illumined by thy light,
That maketh morning of my gloomy night,
Setting my soul from Sorrow's bondage free
With swift-sent revelation! Yea, I see
Beyond the limitation of my sight
And senses, comprehending now, aright,
Today's proportion to eternity.
Through thee, my faith in God is made me sure,
My searching eyes have pierced the misty veil;
The pain and anguish which stern Sorrow brings
Through thee become more easy to endure.
Love-strong I mount, and heaven's high summit scale;
Through thee, my soul has spread her folded wings.

We do not claim that punning is legitimate wit. Wit consists in combination of ideas, punning in combination of words only. We wonder at the one, but we laugh at the drollery of the other — as the world goes a pun is regarded as an imponderable commodity, all know the rank it holds in the order of pure intellect.

Farewell to thee, farewell to thee...
Until we meet again.

There is, between the sexes, a law of incessant reciprocal action, of which God avails himself in the constitution of the family, when He permits brothers and sisters to nestle about the same hearthstone. Its ministration is essential to the best educational results. Our own educational institutions should rest upon this divine basis.

Caroline Healey Dall

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 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

Let not my death be long,
But light
As a bird's swinging;
Happy decision in the height
Of song —
Then flight
From off the ultimate bough!
And let my wing be strong,
And my last note the first
Of another's singing.
See to it, Thou!

I have a work presently in the Press named 'Six Months in Hell' which you may one day read. I consider it will be worth perusing, bruising badly the morals of Britain and America, while Royalty, clergy, critics, society and bloodhounds of law must all incur its censure.

Amanda McKittrick Ros

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 believe if I should die,
And you should kiss my eyelids where I lie
Cold, dead, and dumb to all the world contains,
The folded orbs would open at thy breath,
And from its exile in the Isles of Death
Life would come gladly back along my veins.

Mary Ashley Townsend

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

To be Catholic or Jewish isn't chic. Chic is Episcopalian.

Elizabeth Arden

If all the good people were clever,
And all clever people were good,
The world would be nicer than ever
We thought that it possibly could.
But somehow, 'tis seldom or never
The two hit it off as they should;
The good are so harsh to the clever,
The clever so rude to the good!

Elizabeth Wordsworth

As in the fourteen lines of a sonnet, a few strokes of the pencil can hold immensity.

Dance with all the might of your body, and all the fire of your soul, in order that you may shake all melancholy out of your liver; and you need not restrain yourself with the apprehension that any lady will have the least fear that the violence of your movements will ever shake anything out of your brains.

Sick people need immediate help, understanding and humanity almost as much as they need highly standardized and efficient practice.

Sara Josephine Baker

A happy childhood is one of the best gifts that parents have it in their power to bestow.

Mary Cholmondeley

Grieve not that I die young.
Is it not well to pass away
ere life hath lost its brightness?

Lady Flora Hastings

Poor indeed must thou be, if around thee
Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw—

Harriet Winslow Sewall

Revolution should never be ashamed of itself.

Teresa Billington-Greig