Pleasures of the mind have this advantage,--they never cloy nor wear themselves out, but increase by employment.

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!

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.

This specter of the female politician, who abandons her family to neglect for the sake of passing bills in parliament, is just as complete an illusion of the masculine brain, as the other specter whom Sydney Smith laid by a joke,--the woman who would forsake an infant for a quadratic equation.

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.

Our sex bears the disgrace not only of a great deal of genuine poltroonery, but also of much which is mere affectation.

Ours is the old, old story of every uprising race or class or order. The work of elevation must be wrought by ourselves or not at all.