[Finishing schools] are nicely adapted machines for experimenting on the question, "Into how little space a human being can be crushed?" I have seen some souls so compressed that they would have fitted into a small thimble, and found room to move . . .

Men are like the earth and we are the moon; we turn always one side to them, and they think there is no other, because they don't see it - but there is.

Power! Did you ever hear of men being asked whether other souls should have power or not? It is born in them.

Slavery may, perhaps, be best compared to the infantile disease of measles; a complaint which so commonly attacks the young of humanity in their infancy, and when gone through at that period leaves behind it so few fatal marks; but which when it normally attacks the fully developed adult becomes one of the most virulent and toxic of diseases, often permanently poisoning the constitution where it does not end in death.

Everything has two sides - the outside that is ridiculous, and the inside that is solemn.

There are only two things that are absolute realities, love and knowledge, and you can't escape them.

Marriage has been a very rich and beautiful development of my life. Month by month as we live together we seem to come nearer to each other; and to feel a more complete fellowship. I do not feel that it in any way fetters or narrows my world: - it seems rather to enlarge it.