Quotes by 19th-century Women

Now I am nothing but a veil; all my body is a veil beneath which a child sleeps.

Gabriela Mistral

I do not know of any divine commands. I do know of most important human ones. I do not know the needs of a god or of another world.... I do know that women make shirts for seventy cents a dozen in this one. I do know that the needs of humanity and this world are infinite unending constant and immediate. They will take all our time our strength our love and our thoughts; and our work here will be only then begun.

Helen H. Gardener

Our opinion of people depends less upon what we see in them, than upon what they make us see in ourselves

The Bookshop has a thousand books,
All colors, hues, and tinges,
And every cover is a door
That turns on magic hinges.

Nancy Byrd Turner

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

The most terrible thing of all is happy love, for then there is fear in everything.

I took pleasure when I could, I acted clearly and morally and without regret. I'm very lucky.

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men, and the love of little children;…whose life was an inspiration, whose memory a benediction.

Bessie Anderson Stanley

There is nothing more American than the trade-union movement.

Rose Schneiderman

No man or woman should depend upon another for maintenance and necessaries. Family discord and social degradation will never end till each depends upon herself.

Anandi Gopal Joshi

Dear Washington, how I love you, with your beautiful, broad, generous streets and blue skies! The sun shines always there for me.

It seems to me that the most fundamental mistake most parents make with children is to expect them to be grateful. Children are never grateful.... The 'sacrifices' you made were not for them, they were for you.

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

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

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

Ellen Wood (author)

Another great illusion that woman must... destroy... is the impurity of sex, the realisation in defiance of superstition that there is nothing impure in sex - except in the mental attitude toward it...

To marry and have children is the ideal life for a woman. What career could ever be as fine? To give the world splendid men and women-isn't that the noblest thing a woman could possibly do?

Jessie Willcox Smith

The things which concerned him more than anything else were the what and the why—the what because he felt it was necessary to know absolutely what you were questioning and what you were doing or what concerned you, and then the why, the depth type of thinking which showed you the reason for doing the thing and would perhaps indicate clearly whether you should maintain what was being done or should change what was being done.

Lillian Moller Gilbreth

Look at life all around; everything is growing, everything is moving forward. Therefore I recommend keeping in touch with life and with art.

Agrippina Vaganova

The many varieties and wonderful colors of the modern dahlia make it a totally different flower from the one our grandmothers knew. The names are descriptive of the different varieties, and as there are so many of them, and they bloom from early in June or July until frost, a garden of dahlias might be very interesting.

Helena Rutherfurd Ely

How ridiculous we often are in our negations, our strutting self importance, our penchant for making labels and sticking them on people. As though labelling a person disposed of him!

The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.

Margery Williams

Even before the discovery of copper South Australia had turned the corner.

Catherine Helen Spence

But every road is tough to me
That has no friend to cheer it.

Elizabeth Shane

Lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for.

Ethel Lina White