The colored woman feels that woman's cause is one and universal; and that not till the image of God, whether in parian or ebony, i...s sacred and inviolable; not till race, color, sex and condition are seen as the accidents and not the substance of life ... [ellipsis in source] not till then is woman's lesson taught and woman's cause won--not the white woman's, nor the red woman's, but the cause of every man and every woman who has writhed silently under a mighty wrong. Woman's wrongs are thus indissolubly linked with all undefended woe, and the acquirement of her "rights" will mean the final triumph of all right over might, the supremacy of the moral force of reason, and justice, and love in the government of the nations of the earth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I care not for the theoretical symmetry and impregnable logic of your moral code, I care not for the hoary respectability and trad...itional mysticisms of your theological institutions, I care not for the beauty and solemnity of your rituals and religious ceremonies, I care not even for the reasonableness and unimpeachable fairness of your social ethics,--if it does not turn out better, nobler, truer, men and women,--if it does not add to the world's stock of valuable souls,--if it does not give us a sounder, healthier, more reliable product from this great factory of men--I will have none of it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... when the right of the individual is made sacred, when the image of God in human form, whether in marble or in clay, whether in... alabaster or in ebony, is consecrated and inviolable, when men have been taught to look beneath the rags and grime, the pomp and pageantry of mere circumstance and have regard unto the celestial kernel uncontaminated at the core,--when race, color, sex, condition, are realized to be the accidents, not the substance of life, and consequently as not obscuring or modifying the inalienable title to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,--then is mastered the science of politeness, the art of courteous contact, which is naught but the practical application of the principal [sic] of benevolence, the back bone and marrow of all religion; then woman's lesson is taught and woman's cause is won--not the white woman nor the black woman nor the red woman, but the cause of every man or woman who has writhed silently under a mighty wrong.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I see two dingy little rooms with "FOR LADIES" swinging over one and "FOR COLORED PEOPLE" over the other; while wondering under wh...ich head I come, I notice a little way off the only hotel proprietor of the place whittling a pine stick as he sits with one leg thrown across an empty goods box; and as my eye falls on a sample room next door which seems to be driving the only wide-awake and popular business of the commonwealth, I cannot help ejaculating under my breath, "What a field for the missionary woman."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
With five to ten hundred pure-minded young women threading the streets of the village every evening unattended, vice must slink aw...ay, like frost before the rising sun ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Agnosticism has nothing to impart. Its sermons are the exhortations of one who convinces you he stands on nothing and urges you to... stand there too.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... while our men seem thoroughly abreast of the times on almost every other subject, when they strike the woman question they dro...p back into sixteenth century logic. They leave nothing to be desired generally in regard to gallantry and chivalry, but they actually do not seem sometimes to have outgrown that old contemporary of chivalry--the idea that women may stand on pedestals or live in doll houses,... but they must not furrow their brows with thought or attempt to help men tug at the great questions of the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great, the fundamental need of any nation, any race, is for heroism, devotion, sacrifice; and there cannot be heroism, devotio...n, or sacrifice in a primarily skeptical spirit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Her wrongs are ... indissolubly linked with all undefended woe, all helpless suffering, and the plenitude of her "rights" will mea...n the final triumph of all right over might, the supremacy of the moral forces of reason and justice and love in the government of the nation. God hasten the day.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... women are more quiet. They don't feel called to mount a barrel and harangue by the hour every time they imagine they have prod...uced an idea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »