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.

Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it.

Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.

We set the treatment of bodies so high above the treatment of souls, that the physician occupies a higher place in society than the school-master.

A want of the habit of observing and an inveterate habit of taking averages are each of them often equally misleading.

A woman cannot live in the light of intellect. Society forbids it. Those conventional frivolities, which are called her 'duties', forbid it. Her 'domestic duties', high-sounding words, which, for the most part, are but bad habits (which she has not the courage to enfranchise herself from, the strength to break through), forbid it.