Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

Life is a hard fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the principle of evil, hand to hand, foot to foot. Every inch of the way is disputed. The night is given us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength which has been given us, to go forth to work with it till the evening.

I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women... no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.

The great reformers of the world turn into the great misanthropists, if circumstances or organization do not permit them to act.

If I could give you information of my life it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do in His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing. I have worked hard, very hard, that is all; and I have never refused God anything.

There is a physical, not moral, impossibility of supplying the wants of the intellect in the state of civilisation at which we have arrived.

Women never have a half-hour in all their lives (excepting before or after anybody is up in the house) that they can call their own, without fear of offending or of hurting someone. Why do people sit up so late, or, more rarely, get up so early? Not because the day is not long enough, but because they have 'no time in the day to themselves.' 1852