Frances Willard Quotes

29 Sourced Quotes

The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.

Frances Willard
This seems to be the law of progress in everything we do; it moves along a spiral rather than a perpendicular; we seem to be actually going out of the way, and yet it turns out that we were really moving upward all the time.

Frances Willard
Tens of thousands who could never afford to own, feed and stable a horse, had by this bright invention enjoyed the swiftness of motion which is perhaps the most fascinating feature of material life.

Frances Willard
Home can only come to its true dignity and power when the wife and mother is an equal partner in all that appertains to the sacred interests of the larger home of society and government.

Frances Willard
A reform often advances most rapidly by indirection.

Frances Willard
I finally concluded that all failure was from a wobbling will rather than a wobbling wheel.

Frances Willard
And why should not women enter the ministry? The mother heart of God will never be known to the world until translated into speech by mother-hearted women.

Frances Willard
A woman's intellect is as worthy of cultivation as a man's.

Frances Willard
To determine upon success is frequently success itself.... to a steadfast, consecrated, resolute soul there are no impossibilities.

Frances Willard
As a temperance reformer I always felt a strong attraction toward the bicycle, because it is the vehicle of so much harmless pleasure, and because the skill required in handling it obliges those who mount to keep clear heads and steady hands.

Frances Willard
I observed long ago that no class of human creatures get so little sympathy as those who carry in their life-luggage a bundle of nerves.

Frances Willard
Blessed are the inclusive for they shall be included... Cursed are the exclusive for they shall be excluded.

Frances Willard
I do not wish to know what the country does for the rich, they can take care of themselves; but what it does for the poor determines the decency, not to say the civilization, of a government.

Frances Willard
The history of the reformer, whether man or woman, on any line of action, is but this: When he sees it all alone he is a fanatic; when a good many see it with him they are enthusiasts; when all see it he is a hero.

Frances Willard
Whatever diminishes the sense of superiority in men makes them more manly, brotherly, and pleasant to have about.

Frances Willard
It is the trifles that make up the sum of existence, and every act of ours, however slight, has an influence, direct or indirect, over all our life. We make ourselves by our deeds.

Frances Willard
If I am asked to explain why I learned the bicycle I should say I did it as an act of grace, if not of actual religion.

Frances Willard
Vice is always in the active, virtue often in the passive.

Frances Willard
The world needs all the sunshine it can get and you have got to help make it.

Frances Willard
Alcoholic drinks introduce added friction into the machinery of body and mind; by their use the individual is handicapped in the race toward a higher and more perfect individuality, and what hinders one in this race hinders us all.

Frances Willard
Dreaming is the poorest of all grindstones on which to sharpen the wits. There is only one thing to do: have a fixed purpose and stick to it.

Frances Willard
The curse, canker, rust, and blight of the religious life, have been that we theorized instead of practiced, and that we antagonized those who differed from us as to our theories.

Frances Willard
She who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain the mastery of life.

Frances Willard
A teacher cannot be one thing and teach her children to be another.

Frances Willard
People who by nature and practice make a business of keeping other people down, whether through law or custom, or personal power, are among the world's monstrosities.

Frances Willard
To think we have the ability to do a thing is almost to accomplish it.

Frances Willard
There is hardly a field of labor into which woman has not penetrated, and every day brings some new story of discovery and achievement.

Frances Willard
The bicycle is the steed that never tires, and is 'mettlesome' in the fullest sense of the word. It is full of tricks and capers, and to hold his head steady and make him prance to suit you is no small accomplishment.

Frances Willard
The capacity of the human mind to resist knowledge is nowhere more painfully illustrated than in the postulate laid down by average minds that home is always to be just what it is now — forgetting that in no two consecutive generations has it remained the same.

Frances Willard