Quotations

«If Darwin's theory should be true, it will not degrade man; it will simply raise the whole animal world into dignity, leaving man as far in advance as he is at present»

«We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections; and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life / some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed / because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this defense against passionate affliction even more than men.»

«Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.»

«For what is love itself, for the one we love best? - an enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love»

«Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relation of the least-instructed human beings...»

«A toddling little girl is a center of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.»

«More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple pity that will not forsake us»

«Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous»

«Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.»

«A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.»