Women Born In The 19th Century

"There are so many ways that persons of intelligence have of expressing themselves. Some of these ways have little in common, many of them are contradictory in method, most of them differ in the effect aimed at, or the impression made."

"There certainly is at present, then, no standard English, either in writing or in speaking, that is easily and cheaply available. There is no one correct way of writing or of speaking English. Within certain limits there are many ways of attaining correctness."

"Letters of friendship, of love, of hate, of business, of state, have come into new value within the last twenty-five years. Reading them has come to be one of the most alluring pleasures of a large class of persons."

"The letter writer who spends his individuality in faddish paper, colored ink, and enigmatic paging, who 'crosses' his manuscript or insists upon paper so thin that it is hard to know which side one is reading, will need large revenues of talent to keep him from living behind his means in his claims on his reader's attention."

"I believe in organizations and social clubs. While I claim that the deaf are equal to their hearing friends in every respect and should be treated accordingly, I still feel that there is an unexpressed bond of comradeship and sympathy amongst persons similarly afflicted, and that they derive much satisfaction from associating with others of their kind."

"To sit and wring my hands in agony may have been the first emotion with which I met this great sorrow. But I pulled myself together and applied my whole thought to the working out of the great duty that had fallen to my lot."

"Is it not time that the public should be enlightened on the subject of the ability and efficiency of those who, normal and intelligent in every respect, lack only the sense of hearing?"

"Dame Whina was very strong willed and believed in fighting for things that benefited Maori. She didn't care who was in power, but believed that not one more acre of land should be alienated from Māori without Māori consent."

"Not one more acre."

"She was the person that galvanised all the array of different issues, opinions, claims, angsts that different communities had had around alienation of land, loss of authority and she really encapsulated that into the march and the term not one more acre."

"The Titanic disaster was a tragedy that was as unnecessary as turning the Brown Palace Hotel into Pikes Peak."

"Let us all remember that the Treaty was signed so that we could all live as one nation in Aotearoa."

"Long ago, when the world was young for many of us, we believed in marriage as a great adventure, and if the world has been kind to us and has spared us our ideals, it is still the great adventure upon which some of us have embarked, while others still linger on the shore."

"Many able women in early middle life, having mastered the art of home-making in the finest school in the world--a busy and happy household--seek a wider sort of home-making. They have a vision of the city they know best, or the State or the nation, as a greater household, to be organized and made happier through the influence of a larger motherhood. It was so with Mrs. Park."

"Who honestly believes that he or she is extravagant? Not one, believe me. We all have our little ways of saving string, of doing without something, from early strawberries to diamond tiaras, which lead us to believe we are in the saving class."

"It's perfectly useless to ask people why they get married, but I fancy I know the reason, just the same. They may think it is one reason or another, but the real reason, to my mind, is an old one: The Eternal Purpose is making use of them to carry on the business of the world."

"At this time it's being considered as a natural death,she was always around town, She always stopped and talked to people. She was very pleasant."

"Her warmth and humanity shone like the first patch of sun on a dark and wintry day, The world will be a colder place without her enthusiastic, elegant and adorable countenance."

"Her strength was always tremendous, tremendous theatrical expertise. She knew more about the theater than anybody that I ever encountered in my life. And she, being a very great actress, could recognize the strengths and the weaknesses in a role, so that she wouldn't allow a part in any of our films to be anything less than a wonderful acting part."

"Kanin, Ruth's husband describe her role as an actress in 1837."

"Ruth exulted in life, Her blazing professionalism and generosity of spirit made it obvious to me that we had in our midst one of the greatest of them all."

"The biggest limitations are the ones we place on ourselves, and opportunities rise up to meet the unique offerings of people."

"I wipe away all the unpleasantness of the day, of the people, of the city, whatever. We have it in our power to overcome assholes, and I think we have them thrown into our path to see if we have the chops to handle them."

"I was amazed the way Garson could take these teams and make me want to see their pictures all over again."

"Work on yourself. Believe in yourself. Show up! Support others! The bounty of the world will open up for you."

"Don't be helpless, don't give up, don't kill yourself, don't look for trouble. Stuff gets in your way, kick it under the rug. Stay well, stay with it, make it come out..."

"I can’t tell you how encouraging a thing like this is. The first film that I was ever in was in 1915, and here we are, and it’s 1969. Actually, I don’t know why it took me so long, though I don’t think, you know, that I’m backward. Anyway, thank you Bill, thank you Bob, thank you Roman and thank you Mia, and thank all of you who voted for me."

"is it not time that our limited tongues should fall into the ocean of speech and of human thought? What will be the language of mankind delivered to the new Aurora — Anarchy!"

"Along with her more famous sisters, the radical women born in the decade of the Paris Commune, Madeleine Pelletier belonged to the first generation of women for whom higher education was available and participation in mass political parties open. They shared not only the heritage of the Russian nihilists-Chernyshevsky's fictional Vera, Breshkovskaia, Perovskaia-they also grew up with stories of the Paris Commune and Louise Michel, whose funeral Pelletier and Alexandra Kollontai attended."

"The most interesting women in modern European history appear in the ranks of radical political movements. It is difficult to find conservative or traditional counterparts equal to Louise Michel, Emma Goldman, and Rosa Luxemburg. Even Isadora Duncan, creator of modern dance, flirted with communism. More thoughtful and articulate and certainly as politically active as any of these women is the lesser known Spanish anarchist, Federica Montseny. On asking what attracted these women to radical politics, one discovers in each a commitment to feminism. No person, not even Emma Goldman, explored this necessary relationship between feminist and socialist principles more provocatively than did Federica Montseny."

"That is what we want to destroy — this annihilation — this eating of man by an other man."

"In what would you that we should help those who govern—their work being only exploitation and wholesale murder—it has never been otherwise: the reason for the existence of a state is nothing but the accomplishment of some crime or other in order to assure the domination of a privileged class."

"The land which belongs to all can no more be divided than the light which also belongs to all."

"The world carnage put an end to the golden era when a Bakunin and a Herzen, a Marx and a Kropotkin, a Malatesta and a Lenin, Vera Sazulich, Louise Michel, and all the others could come and go without hindrance. In those days who cared about passports or visas? Who worried about one particular spot on earth? The whole world was one's country."

"The ideal alone is the truth — it is the measure of our horizon. Time was when the ideal was to live without eating an other up. Is it not so still under another form which exists in the so-called civilized countries where the exploiter eats up the exploited? Do not the people in nocks fertilize the soil by their sweat and blood?"

"how I loved her. How grateful I am to her for the freedom she allowed me to act as my conscience dictated, and how much I would have liked to spare her the bad days she so often had."

"He had brought a volume of Baudelaire which we read a few pages of when we had the time."

"One of the future revenges for the murder of Paris will be that of revealing the customary infamous betrayals of military reaction."

"I am told that I am an accomplice of the Commune. Certainly, yes, since the Commune wanted more than anything else the social revolution, and since the social revolution is the dearest of my desires. More than that, I have the honour of being one of the instigators of the Commune, which by the way had nothing–nothing, as is well known–to do with murders and arson. I who was present at all the sittings at the Town Hall, I declare that there was never any question of murder or arson...Do you want to know who are really guilty? It is the politicians. And perhaps later light will be brought on to all these events which today it is found quite natural to blame on all partisans of the social revolution…Since it seems that any heart which beats for freedom has the right only to a lump of lead, I too claim my share."

"For the anarchists in the United States Voltairine de Cleyre became the American version of Louise Michel, the French anarchist teacher who had engaged in terrorist activity during the Paris Commune, had endured several prison sentences, and was the recognized saint of international anarchism. Louise Michel had lived in deep privation, gave all her possessions to fellow revolutionaries, and spent a life of devoted self-sacrifice in the cause of anarchism. Her one self-indulgence was a passionate devotion to her mother. Anarchists emphasized the similarities between Michel and de Cleyre. Both were teachers; both nearly had been assassinated by former followers and had refused to prosecute their attackers; both tended toward extreme generosity toward the movement"

"We are Anarchists because it is absolutely impossible to obtain justice for all in any other way than by destroying institutions founded on force and privilege. We cannot believe that improvement is possible, if we still keep up the same institutions, now more rotten than in the past, or if we merely replace those whose iniquities are known by new men."

"How many are there of the countless millions who have entered this life, passed through its changing scenes and at last have laid down to rest, of whom it can be truly said, “Here rest they who have labored for the uplifting of the oppressed, who have devoted their energies unstintingly in the interest of the ‘common people?’” We fear there are few indeed. A life devoted to the interest of the working class; a life of self-abnegation, a life full of love, kindness, gentleness, tragedy, activity, sadness and kind-ness, are some of the characteristics which went to make up the varied life of our comrade, Louise Michel. In the elderly woman, clad in simple black garments, with gray hair curling upon rounded shoulders and kindest of blue eyes glancing from the strongly marked face, none but those who knew her personally would in the last few years have recognized Louise Michel…So it is in the baffling ocean of humanity. A strong character like Louise Michel looms up like a pillar of light or a star of hope, and the weary reformer sees it and takes fresh courage to struggle on in the surging ocean of humanity, and endeavors to calm its troubled waves and point the way to the harbor of plenty."

"La mujer," one of the articles that Luisa Capetillo published in 1912 in Cultura obrera, was later included in the anthology, Voces de liberación (Voices of Liberation), published in 1921 by Lux Editorial from Argentina. Printed for the purpose of gathering the libertarian voices of the most progressive women in the world, the book contains short essays by Rosa Luxembourg, Clara Zetkin, Emma Goldman, Louise Michel, and various Latin American women including Margarita Ortega, a Mexican revolutionary, María López from Buenos Aires, and Rosalina Gutiérrez from Montevideo. The editorial note introducing the authors states, "These voices of liberation are a call to women by their own compañeras to think more and act together with men in the struggle for human emancipation."

"A fuller knowledge of our History and Literature will bring to many faith and trust in the good of the world, the joy of living, content in attaining all the possibilities of our present existence — all fundamental principles of our religion."

"Let us realize the power of individuals, joined for good purposes."

"If it were generally understood that Christianity and Mohammedanism were genuine daughters of Israel, we might hope for less unfilial treatment"

"We get our knowledge by balloon ascensions into the spiritual clouds for a few moments, and we are provided with parachutes to let us down easily again into the material world."

"Let us be tolerant, courteous, and just to each other...Let us be entirely free from personalities, and yet have freest discussions."

"We, drops of blood from one great artery, who have come from distant homes"

"We must add our voices to those who cry out that there is a standard below which we will not allow human beings to live, and that that standard is not at the freezing nor starving point....In a democracy all are responsible."