All actual heroes are essential men, And all men possible heroes.

He's just, your cousin, ay, abhorrently, He'd wash his hands in blood, to keep them clean.

Every age, Through being beheld too close, is ill-discerned By those who have not lived past it.

A woman cannot do the thing she ought, which means whatever perfect thing she can, in life, in art, in science, but she fears to let the perfect action take her part and rest there: she must prove what she can do before she does it, -- prate of woman's rights, of woman's mission, woman's function, till the men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, A woman's function plainly is... to talk. Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty and the feeble wrong because of weakness.

With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wells In this world!

I would confide to you perhaps my secret profession of faith - which is ... which is ... that let us say and do what we please and can ... there is a natural inferiority of mind in women - of the intellect ... not by any means, of the moral nature - and that the history of Art and of genius testifies to this fact openly.