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 »
[Girls] study under the paralyzing idea that their acquirements cannot be brought into practical use. They may subserve the purpos...es of promoting individual domestic pleasure and social enjoyment in conversation, but what are they in comparison with the grand stimulation of independence and self- reliance, of the capability of contributing to the comfort and happiness of those whom they love as their own souls?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It would be as wise to set up an accomplished lawyer to saw wood as a business as to condemn an educated and sensible woman to spe...nd all her time boiling potatoes and patching old garments. Yet this is the lot of many a one who incessantly stitches and boils and bakes, compelled to thrust back out of sight the aspirations which fill her soul.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thus far woman has struggled through life with bandaged eyes, accepting the dogma of her weakness and inability to take care of he...rself not only physically but intellectually. She has held out a trembling hand and received gratefully the proffered aid. She has foregone her right to study, to know the laws and purposes of government to which she is subject. But there is now awakened in her a consciousness that she is defrauded of her legitimate Rights and that she never can fulfill her mission until she is placed in that position to which she feels herself called by the divinity within. Hitherto she has surrendered her person and her individuality to man, but she can no longer do this and not feel that she is outraging her nature and her God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... is it not clear that to give to such women as desire it and can devote themselves to literary and scientific pursuits all the ...advantages enjoyed by men of the same class will lessen essentially the number of thoughtless, idle, vain and frivolous women and thus secure the [sic] society the services of those who now hang as dead weight?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness ...and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The reason why women effect so little and are so shallow is because their aims are low, marriage is the prize for which they striv...e; if foiled in that they rarely rise above disappointment ... [ellipsis in source]LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh, had I received the education I desired, had I been bred to the profession of the law, I might have been a useful member of soc...iety, and instead of myself and my property being taken care of, I might have been a protector of the helpless, a pleader for the poor and unfortunate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...I do deeply deplore, of the sake of the cause, the prevalent notion, that the clergy must be had, either by persuasion or by br...ibery. They will not need persuasion or bribery, if their hearts are with us; if they are not, we are better without them. It is idle to suppose that the kingdom of heaven cannot come on earth, without their cooperation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »