... when one reflects on the books one never has written, and never may, though their schedules lie in the beautiful chirography which marks the inception of an unexpressed thought upon the pages of one's notebook, one is aware, of any given idea, that the chances are against its ever being offered to one's dearest readers.

To exist as an advertisement of her husband's income, or her father's generosity, has become a second nature to many a woman who must have undergone, one would say, some long and subtle process of degradation before she sunk [sic] so low, or grovelled so serenely.

It is impossible to forget the sense of dignity which marks the hour when one becomes a wage-earner... I felt that I had suddenly acquired value to myself, to my family, and to the world.

The rainiest nights, like the rainiest lives, are by no means the saddest.

... to work, to work hard, to see work steadily, and see it whole, was the way to be reputable. I think I always respected a goodblacksmith more than a lady of leisure.

... it seems to have been my luck to stumble into various forms of progress, to which I have been of the smallest possible use; yet for whose sake I have suffered the discomfort attending all action in moral improvements, without the happiness of knowing that this was clearly quite worth while.

It is in the comprehension of the physically disabled, or disordered ... that we are behind our age.... sympathy as a fine art is backward in the growth of progress.