[Women's] duty is nothing else than the fulfilment [sic] of the whole moral law, the attainment of every human virtue.

So immense are the claims on a mother, physical claims on her bodily and brain vigor, and moral claims on her heart and thoughts, that she cannot ... meet them all and find any large margin beyond for other cares and work. She serves the community in the very best and highest way it is possible to do, by giving birth to healthy children, whose physical strength has not been defrauded, and to whose moral and mental nature she can give the whole of her thoughts.

Men give us most rarely that which we really want, not favor, but - Justice. Nothing is easier than to coax them to pet us like children, nothing more difficult than to persuade them to treat us like responsible human beings.

My great panacea for making society at once better and more enjoyable would be to cultivate greater sincerity.

I have often thought how strange it is that men can at once and the same moment cheerfully consign our sex to lives either of narrowest toil or senseless luxury and vanity, and then sneer at the smallness of our aims, the pettiness of our thoughts, the puerility of our conversation!

I think it is worse to be poor in mind than in purse, to be stunted and belittled in soul, made a coward, made a liar, made mean and slavish, accustomed to fawn and prevaricate, and "manage" by base arts a husband or a father,--I think this is worse than to be kicked with hobnailed shoes.

Every woman who has any margin of time or money to spare should adopt some one public interest, some philanthropic undertaking,or some social agitation of reform, and give to that cause whatever time and work she may be able to afford.