Quotes by 19th-century Women

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 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

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

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

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

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

Education and justice are democracy's only life insurance....

Nannie Helen Burroughs

Everything emotional in America becomes a mere show and make-believe. Americans are trained to invest money, are said to take even desperate chances on that, yet never do they invest [in] beauty nor take desperate chances on that. With money they try to buy beauty—after it has died—famishing—with grimace. Beauty is ever dead in America.

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

For a few political turncoats there is real excuse. One can hardly blame those whom one ministry have seen fit to throw overboard for having the strength to swim to the other side.

Lady Dorothy Nevill

Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity; it teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and admiration, not to mention the deep awe and joy that the natural order of things brings to the true scientist.

Nothing, I believe, can really teach us the nature and meaning of inspiration but personal experience of it. That we may all have such experience if we will but attend to the divine influences in our own hearts, is the cardinal doctrine of Quakerism.

Caroline Stephen

Reincarnation is implicit in the manifested universe and is a basic and fundamental.

Well, Mr. Baldwin, this is a pretty kettle of fish!

If only life were one long crisis, everyone would be perfect.

Angela Thirkell

The Administration pinned its faith on jail — that institution of convenience to the oppressor when he is strong in power and his weapons are effective. When the oppressor miscalculates the strength of the oppressed, jail loses its convenience.

What's the use of praying for a thing, if when it comes, you won't take it?

Man is not made better by being degraded; he is seldom restrained from crime by harsh measures, except the principle of fear predominates in his character; and then he is never made radically better for its influence.

Men trade unionists are accused of sex privilege and prejudice … A belief in the divine right of every man to his job is not peculiar to kings and capitalists, and men in organised trades are not disposed to share these advantages with a host of women competitors.

The light died out and left the sky,
We sighed and rose and said good-bye,
We had forgotten — He and I,
That he was dead, that I must die.

Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux

I want to dance always, to be good and not evil, and when it is all over not to have the feeling that I might have done better.

The genuine Anarchist looks with sheer horror upon every destruction, every mutilation of a human being, physical or moral. He loathes wars, executions and imprisonments, the grinding down of the worker's whole nature in a dreary round of toil, the sexual and economic slavery of women, the oppression of children, the crippling and poisoning of human nature by the preventable cruelty and injustice of man to man in every shape and form.

Charlotte Wilson

They sat and combed their beautiful hair,
Their long, bright tresses, one by one,
As they laughed and talked in the chamber there,
After the revel was done.

If you wish to understand me at all (and to write an autobiography is only to open a window into one's heart) you must understand first and foremost, that I am an Australian.

The white man had come with the Bible in one hand, the bottle in the other.

E. Pauline Johnson

I battered the cordons around me
And cradled my wings on the breeze,
Then soared to the uttermost reaches
With rapture, with power, with ease!

Georgia Douglas Johnson