Half of the receipts in our cookbooks are mere murder to such constitutions and stomachs as we grow here. ...in America, owing to our brighter skies and more fervid climate, we have developed an acute, nervous delicacy of temperament far more akin to that of France than of England.
Catharine Beecher... the school should be an appendage of the family state, and modeled on its primary principle, which is, to train the ignorant and weak by self-sacrificing labor and love; and to bestow the most on the weakest, the most undeveloped, and the most sinful.
Catharine BeecherTo open avenues to political place and power for all classes of women would cause these humble labors of the family and school to be still more undervalued and shunned.
Catharine BeecherEating highly seasoned food is unhealthful, because it stimulates too much, provokes the appetite too much, and often is indigestible.
Catharine BeecherThe woman movement is one which is uniting by co-operating influences, all the antagonisms that are warring on the family state. Spiritualism, free love, free divorce, the vicious indulgences consequent on unregulated civilization, the worldliness which tempts men and women to avoid large families, often by sinful methods, thus making the ignorant masses the chief supply of the future ruling majorities; and most powerful of all, the feeble constitution and poor health of women, causing them to dread maternity as--what it is fast becoming--an accumulation of mental and bodily tortures.
Catharine BeecherWhen institutions are endowed to train women for all departments connected with the family state, domestic labor, now so shunned and disgraced, will become honorable, will gain liberal compensation, and will enable every woman to secure an independence in employments suited to her sex. And when this is attained, there will be few or none who wish to enter the professions of men or take charge of civil government.
Catharine Beecher