It is not the straining for great things that is most effective it is the doing the little things, the common duties, a little better and better.

The great law of denial belongs to the powerful forces of life, whether the case be one of coolish baked beans, or an unrequited affection.

The woman's personal identity is a vast undiscovered country -- with which Society has yet to acquaint itself, and by which it is yet to be revolutionized.

I believe in women and in their right to their own best possibilities in every department of life. I believe that the methods ofdress practiced among women are a marked hindrance to the realization of these possibilities, and should be scorned or persuaded out of society.

Superior music is purity itself it clears the air.

... to work, to work hard, to see work steadily, and see it whole, was the way to be reputable. I think I always respected a goodblacksmith more than a lady of leisure.

The literary artist will ... portray what he knows, and little else. Imagination is built upon knowledge, and his dreams will rest upon his facts. He is worth to the world just about what he has learned from it, and no more.

Death is not the worst sorrow.

What an immense power over the life is the power of possessing distinct aims. The voice, the dress, the look, the very motion of a person, define and alter when he or she begins to live for a reason.

It is impossible to forget the sense of dignity which marks the hour when one becomes a wage-earner... I felt that I had suddenly acquired value to myself, to my family, and to the world.

It is in the comprehension of the physically disabled, or disordered ... that we are behind our age.... sympathy as a fine art is backward in the growth of progress.

What an immense power over life is the power of possessing distinct aims.

Possibly the Creator did not make the world chiefly for the purpose of providing studies for gifted novelists but if He had done so, we can scarcely imagine that He could have offered anything much better in the way of material.

It is not in our drawing-rooms that we should look to judge of the intrinsic worth of any style of dress. The street-car is a truer crucible of its inherent value.

The distractions, the exhaustions, the savage noises, the demands of town life, are, for me, mortal enemies to thought, to sleep,and to study its extremes of squalor and of splendor do not stimulate, but sadden me certain phases of its society I profoundly value, but would sacrifice them to the heaven of country quiet, if I had to choose between.

I can remember no time when I did not understand that my mother must write books because people would have and read them but I cannot remember one hour in which her children needed her and did not find her.

A literary woman's best critic is her husband.

To exist as an advertisement of her husband's income, or her father's generosity, has become a second nature to many a woman who must have undergone, one would say, some long and subtle process of degradation before she sunk [sic] so low, or grovelled so serenely.

Next to the love between man and his Creator, The love of one man and one woman, Is the loftiest and the most illusive ideal, That has been set before the world. A perfect marriage is like a pure heart: Those who have it are fit to see God.