Oh, if I had only known, if I had only been ready, our lives can really be the great adventure we so passionately want them to be.
Hortense Odlum... a business career for a woman and her need for a woman's life as wife and mother, are not enemies at all, unless we make them so, but may be the closest and most co-operative friends and supporter of each other.
Hortense OdlumThe home is a woman's natural background.... From the beginning I tried to have the policy of the store reflect as nearly as it was possible in the commercial world, those standards of comfort and grace which are apparent in a lovely home.
Hortense Odlum... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,--if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.
Hortense OdlumNot rarely, and this is especially true of wives and mothers, the motive behind assuming a disproportionate share of work and responsibility is completely unselfish. We want to protect, to spare those of whom we are fond. We forget that, regardless of the motive, the results of such action are almost always destructive and unproductive.
Hortense OdlumA completely indifferent attitude toward clothes in women seems to me to be an admission of inferiority, of perverseness, or of alack of realization of her place in the world as a woman. Or--what is even more hopeless and pathetic--it's an admission that she has given up, that she is beaten, and refuses longer to stand up to the world.
Hortense Odlum