A drop of water, if it could write out its own history, would explain the universe to us.

I defied the machinery to make me its slave. Its incessant discords could not drown the music of my thoughts if I would let them fly high enough.

Tailor's work--the finishing of men's outside garments--was the "trade" learned most frequently by women in [the 1820s and 1830s],and one or more of my older sisters worked at it; I think it must have been at home, for I somehow or somewhere got the idea, while I was a small child, that the chief end of woman was to make clothing for mankind.

If the world 's a vale of tears, Smile, till rainbows span it!

No one can feel more gratefully the charm of noble scenery, or the refreshment of escape into the unspoiled solitudes of nature, than the laborer at some close in-door employment.

Girls especially are fond of exchanging confidences with those whom they think they can trust; it is one of the most charming traits of a simple, earnest-hearted girlhood, and they are the happiest women who never lose it entirely.

A journal of the 'subjective' kind I have always thought foolish, as nurturing a morbid self -consciousness in the writer; and yet, alone so much as I am, it is well to have some sort of a ventilator from the interior.