The quote database

In our sorrow we see the rough side of the stuff; in our joys the smooth; and who shall say that when the taffeta is turned the most silk may not be in the sorrows?

we never could differ about the worth and comfort of domestic affection

There is only one event in my life which never loses its bitterness; which comes back on me like a retreating wave, going and coming again, which was and is my grief--I never had but one brother who loved and comprehended me.

Husband, lover, nurse--not one of these, has Robert been to me, but all three together.

Oh, if our friends would but put off anatomising one till after one was safely dead, and call to mind that, previously, we have nerves to be agonised and morbid brains to be driven mad!

A man's life does not develop rightly without it, and what is called an 'improvident marriage' often appears to me a noble, righteous, and prudent act.

When gone from hence, may nobody think of me again, except when one or two may think perhaps how I loved them

But with common sense, self-reliance, and attention to the work in hand, any woman can pursue the medical calling without risk.

It has always seemed to me, during many years of active private practice, that the first and constant aim of the family physician should be to diffuse the sanitary knowledge which would enable parents to bring up healthy children.

If an idea, I reasoned, were really a valuable one, there must be some way of realising it.

The love of protecting too often degenerates into downright tyranny.

To me there was no question so important as the emancipation of women from the dogmas of the past, political, religious, and social.

Poverty and ignorance are the parents of intemperance, and that vice will never be suppressed until the burdens of life are equally shared by all.

The breakfast was eaten in silence, the women humbled with a sense of their helplessness, and the men gratified with a sense of their power.

The study of conditions will prove an education in itself and a stimulus to invention.

There is no menial work in the daily living rightly carried out; that which the last century wrongly permitted is made needless by the machinery of to-day.

After all is said, if the young people have an earnest purpose in life it is easy to plan a method of living and to carry it out.

Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the truest sense.

The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather, Understand one another.

The history of human growth and development is at the same time the history of the terrible struggle of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn.

Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities.

The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist.

Yet it is only intelligence and sympathy that can bring us closer to the source of human suffering, and teach us the ultimate way out of it.

Great events are usually preceded by apparently small things.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.