None of us can know what we are capable of until we are tested.

When life follows the course of our desires, it is easy to be swept along without thought.

I must have something to engross my thoughts, some object in life which will fill this vacuum, and prevent this sad wearing away of the heart.

Methods and conclusions formed by half the race only, must necessarily require revision as the other half of humanity rises into conscious responsibility.

The excuse or toleration of cruelty upon any living creature by a woman is a deadly sin against the grandest force in nature - maternal love ... In not a single instance known to science has the cure of any human disease resulted necessarily from this fallacious method of research.

For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women.

Our school education ignores, in a thousand ways, the rules of healthy development.

I felt more than ever the necessity of my mission. But I went home out of spirits, I hardly know why. I must work by myself all life long.

I do not wish to give (women) a first place, still less a second one- but the complete freedom to take their true place, whatever it may be.

It is not easy to be a pioneer but oh, it is fascinating! I would not trade one moment, even the worst moment, for all the riches in the world.

[On sex:] ... the total deprivation of it produces irritability.

A blank wall of social and professional antagonism faces the woman physician that forms a situation of singular and painful loneliness, leaving her without support, respect or professional counsel.

The idea of winning a doctor's degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle, and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me.