The artist alone among men knows what true humility means. His reach forever exceeds his grasp. He can never be satisfied with his work. He knows when he has done well, but he knows he has never attained his dream. He knows he never can.
Rheta Childe DorrFeminism, like Boston, is a state of mind. It is the state of mind of women who realize that their whole position in the social order is antiquated, as a woman cooking over an open fire with heavy iron pots would know that her entire housekeeping was out of date.
Rheta Childe DorrThe theory [before the twentieth century] ... was that all the jobs in the world belonged by right to men, and that only men were by nature entitled to wages. If a woman earned money, outside domestic service, it was because some misfortune had deprived her of masculine protection.
Rheta Childe DorrLiving more lives than one, knowing people of all classes, all shades of opinion, monarchists, republicans, socialists, anarchists, has had a salutary effect on my mind. If every year of my life, every month of the year, I had lived with reformers and crusaders I should be, by this time, a fanatic. As it is I have had such varied things to do, I have had so many different contacts that I am not even very much of a crank.
Rheta Childe Dorr...I swore I would battle not only for myself but for freedom and opportunity for everything living that wore chains, especially sex chains. It that meant poverty for myself and my boy then poverty we should have to suffer. If it meant social ostracism, if it meant relinquishing the literary success that lay within my grasp, then let the success go.
Rheta Childe Dorr