Quotes by 19th-century Women

Daffy-down-dilly came up in the cold, Through the brown mould Although the March breeze blew keen on her face, Although the white snow lay in many a place.

Anna Bartlett Warner

There is a certain strong sense of inner conviction that strikes, with a pang as that of birth, through the very soul, and which is experienced but once or twice in a lifetime.

E. M. Delafield

I've noticed that whenever a woman's willin' to be imposed upon there's always a man standin' 'round ready to do the imposin'.

Eliza Calvert Hall

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rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.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

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...

Added to the difficulty of learning to speak the language was the greater difficulty of finding terms to express the ideas which the missionary had come to convey... in many languages the most precious truths of Christianity had to force their way by bending stubborn words to new ideas, and filling old terms with new content.

Helen Barrett Montgomery

The task of organizing human happiness needs the active cooperation of man and woman: it cannot be relegated to one half of the world.

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

Catherine Helen Spence

Lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for.

Ethel Lina White

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

Elizabeth Shane

Mr. S. had a letter to Brigham Young, and took us to interview him, horrid old wretch! My hand felt dirty for a week after shaking hands with him.

Entertainment must be a satisfying emotional experience, a stirring of the heart. We need all kinds of young men and women. Those people with an artist's eye and an executive's brain that we term directors. Those wrestlers with their souls and typewriters known as authors. The beggars on horseback called actors and actresses.

But see, in our open clearings, how golden the melons lie; Enrich them with sweets and spices, and give us the pumpkin-pie!

Margaret Junkin Preston

In Europe, a product must be good, or it will not sell in competition with other products; with you, it is enough to say that it is good, often enough and sufficiently loudly. The keenest competition is not in the making of things but in the advertising of them!

I am a child of God, and therefore I do not inherit sickness.

Myrtle Fillmore

A man would rather fail according to his own ideas than succeed according to another's.

Kate Langley Bosher

Of course he [Dante] was a genius, wasn't he – like Shakespeare? … He and Dante seem to have known everything … known what would always be true … Wonderful, I imagine that we're going to find that this is full of quotations.

Thought is mind in motion, and every activity upon this earth began as a secret thought.

Annie Rix Militz

There has been no lack of courage in Ireland; there never is, but even our courage has a fatal quality.

Susan L. Mitchell

I love the sweet linnet, the lark, and the thrush, And the gold-throated blackbird with a song in each bush ; The finch and the robin, I love everyone, But not the pied magpie that's walking alone.

Katharine Tynan