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.

It is in the faculty of noble, disinterested, unselfish love that lies the true gift and power of womanhood,--a power which makes us, not the equal of men (I never care to claim such equality), but their equivalents; more than their equivalents in a moral sense.

The nest may be constructed, so far as the sticks go, by the male bird; but only the hen can line it with moss and down!

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.

It is a woman, and only a woman, — a woman all by herself, if she likes, and without any man to help her, — who can turn a house into a home.

I could discern clearly, even at that early age, the essential difference between people who are kind to dogs and people who really love them.

The time comes to every dog when it ceases to care for people merely for biscuits or bones, or even for caresses, and walks out of doors. When a dog really loves, it prefers the person who gives it nothing, and perhaps is too ill ever to take it out for exercise, to all the liberal cooks and active dog-boys in the world.