I come to present the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come to place before the Legislature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast. I come as the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane men and women; of beings sunk to a condition from which the unconcerned world would start with real horror.

Of all the calamities to which humanity is subject, none is so dreadful as insanity. ... All experience shows that insanity seasonably treated is as certainly curable as a cold or a fever.

in proportion as my own discomfort has increased, my conviction of necessity to search into the wants of the friendless and afflicted has deepened. If I am cold, they too are cold; if I am weary, they are distressed; if I am alone, they are abandoned.

Every evil has its good, and every ill an antidote.

Brains are still unfashionable for women to wear, and it has always been proof of women's superiority that the more intelligent a man is, the more women admire him, while the bigger fool a woman is, the more men run after her.

Man is not made better by being degraded; he is seldom restrained from crime by harsh measures, except the principle of fear predominates in his character; and then he is never made radically better for its influence.

I have no particular love for my species, but own to an exhaustless fund of compassion