I wasn't born to be a fighter. I was born with a gentle nature, a flexible character and an organism as equilibrated as it is judg...ed hysterical. I shouldn't have been forced to fight constantly and ferociously. The causes I have fought for have invariably been causes that should have been gained by a delicate suggestion. Since they never were, I made myself into a fighter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I can't earn my own living. I could never make anything turn into money. It's like making fires. A careful assortment of paper, sh...avings, faggots and kindling nicely tipped with pitch will never light for me. I have never been present when a cigarette butt, extinct, thrown into a damp and isolated spot, started a conflagration in the California woods.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I had been curiously depressed all day. In the night I wakened. First precise thought: I know why I'm depressed--nothing inspired ...is going on. Second: I demand that life be inspired every moment. Third: the only way to guarantee this is to have inspired conversation every moment. Fourth: most people never get so far as conversation; they haven't the stamina, and there is no time. Fifth: if I had a magazine I could spend my time filling it up with the best conversation the world has to offer. Sixth: marvelous idea--salvation. Seventh: decision to do it. Deep sleep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I never wanted to live an unembellished life, and I have never done it.... Living under such a compulsion has been like painting p...ictures of life, and I don't take kindly to suggestions that I might have been less egotistically employed had I become a trained nurse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the libert...y of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her--Lucretia Mott, the Grimke sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone--a long galaxy of great women.... Those older women have gone on, and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man's housekeeper. When I was young, if a girl married poverty, she be...came a drudge; if she married wealth, she became a doll. Had I married at twenty-one, I would have been either a drudge or a doll for fifty-five years. Think of it!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I never did believe That I ever could be saved... Without giving up all to God So I freely give the whole, My body and my soul To the Lord God Amen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ability to secure an independent livelihood and honorable employ suited to her education and capacities is the only true found...ation of the social elevation of woman, even in the very highest classes of society. While she continues to be educated only to be somebody's wife, and is left without any aim in life till that somebody either in love, or in pity, or in selfish regard at last grants her the opportunity, she can never be truly independent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »