Women Born In The 19th Century

"s are particularly valuable for the winter and one in particular, , is a good all-the-year plant for a place in the garden that is in constant use. I noticed a very happy and very natural treatment of a bed next to the porch of a front door."

"It is not possible to make sweeping statements about what will or will not grow in clay soil, because there are so many different types of clay. Some are much stickier and more difficult to handle than others; clay that has been made easier to handle by the addition of will grow most plants. I don't believe there is any soil that will not grow something."

"We have a mission house two miles away, where I work mornings in the capacity of preacher, teacher, and doctor,” she wrote. “I hope to be allowed two years home to study medicine, to better help these suffering people."

"I was truly happy then, and since I have set sail for the benighted country, I am happier,” she wrote. “When I reach the doleful shores, I shall be happiest. What comfort comes to us from doing the perfect will of God concerning us!”"

"He drew me unto Himself, and after passing through the shadow of doubts, I entered into the blessed light of His love“"

"Two people within the last month have brought their idols and desired to be known as believers in the God of gods,” she wrote on October 10, 1887. “I shall keep them to show to friends in America as the first trophies of my Congo work.”"

"When I saw a colored woman doing all the work in cases of accouchement, and all the fee going to a white doctor who merely looked on, I asked myself, should I not get the fee myself?"

"I went to Philadelphia, studied medicine hard, procured my degree, and have come back to Atlanta where I have lived all my life, to practice my profession. Some of the best white doctors in the city have welcomed me and say that they will give me an even chance in the profession. That is all I ask."

"I have no money and no source from which to get it, only as I work for every dollar. Do you know any way that might be provided for an emancipated slave to receive any help into this lofty profession? If you cannot do otherwise, then give me a chance, a fair chance."

"(Richmond, Virginia was) a proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children. During my stay there nearly every hour was improved in that sphere of labor. The last quarter of the year 1866, I was enabled ... to have access each day to a very large number of the indigent, and others of different classes, in a population of over 30,000 colored."

"It may be well to state here that, having been reared by a kind aunt in Pennsylvania, whose usefulness with the sick was continually sought, I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to relieve the sufferings of others. Later in life I devoted my time, when best I could, to nursing as a business, serving under different doctors for a period of eight years (from 1852 to 1860); most of the time at my adopted home in Charlestown, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. From these doctors I received letters commending me to the faculty of the New England Female Medical College, whence, four years afterward, I received the degree of doctress of medicine."

"We must teach these people the laws of health; we must preach this new gospel, That gospel, was that the respectability of a household ought to be measured by the condition of the cellar."

"So, long ago I got the idea that the only way I could ever get ahead was to believe in myself and not the other fellow."

"The erasure of black history is intentional. And so we’re going to be intentional about counteracting that narrative and bringing the truth to our curriculum. And it starts with Annie Fisher."

"I am happy in my work and I try to make everyone else happy by sticking to it."

"Because I was of African descent, that unless I could afford to go to Europe for final 'polishing' in my music, I would probably end up singing in a cabaret in America. If I chose science, my chances were better for a good future."

"I work and work and still it seems I have nothing done."

"I myself never even dreamed of being a business woman … I took over because I had to."

"I invariably rose at sunrise, when the days are at their most glorious, and the whole world is full of beauty and music and dreaming, waking from its slumbers under the mists. I made my toilet to a chorus of impatient twittering. It was a fastidious toilet, for throughout my life I have adhered to the simple but exact dictates of fashion as I left it, when Victoria was queen—a neat white blouse, stiff collar and ribbon tie, a dark skirt and coat, stout and serviceable, trim shoes and neat black stockings, a sailor hat and a fly-veil, and, for my excursions to the camps, always a dust-coat and a sunshade. Not until I was in meticulous order would I emerge from my tent, dressed for the day. My first greeting was for the birds."

"Every one of the natives whom I encountered on the east-west line had partaken of human meat, with the exception of Nyerdain, who told me it made him sick. They freely admitted their sharing of these repasts and enumerated those killed and eaten by naming the waters, and drawing a line with the big toe on the sand as they told over in gruesome memory the names they dared not mention. My first words to them were always “No more man-meat.” From the weekly supply train, I would procure part of a bullock or sheep and show them the game food areas, mallee-hen’s eggs, rabbits and so on, that must be their meats now, with as many dampers as I could provide, and a drink of sweetened tea. One morning very early, the news came that Nyan-ngauera had left the camp, taking a fire-stick and accompanied by her little girl. No one would follow her or help to track her. For twelve miles I followed the track unsuccessfully, but Nyan-ngauera doubled many times and gave birth to a child a mile west of my camp, where she killed and ate the baby, sharing the food with the little daughter. Later, with the help of her sons and grandsons, the spot was found, nothing to be seen there save the ashes of a fire. "The bones are under the fire", the boys told me, and digging with the digging-stick we came upon the broken skull, and one or two charred bones, which I later sent to the Adelaide Museum."

"By this time I was a confirmed wanderer, a nomad even as the aborigines. So close had I been in contact with them, that it was now impossible for me to relinquish the work. I realized that they were passing from us. I must make their passing easier. Moreover, all that I knew was little in comparison with all there was yet to learn. I made the decision to dedicate the rest of my life to this fascinating study."

"A glorious thing it is to live in a tent in the infinite—to waken in the grey of dawn, a good hour before the sun outlines the low ridges of the horizon, and to come out into the bright cool air, and scent the wind blowing across the mulga plains. My first thought would be to probe the ashes of my open fireplace, where hung my primitive cooking-vessels, in the hope that some embers had remained alight. Before I retired at night, I invariably made a good fire and covered the glowing coals with the soft ash of the jilyeli, having watched my compatriots so cover their turf fires in Ireland. I would next readjust the stones of the hob to leeward of the morning wind, and set the old Australian billy to boil, while I tidied my tent, and transformed it from bedroom to breakfast-room. As the sun came up, it changed that plain white room into the most exquisitely-frescoed pergola, with a patterning far surpassing the best of Grinling Gibbon’s handiwork. In a constant play of leafy light and shadow, I would eat my tea and toast in absolute content, while outside the blue smoke of the fire changed to grey in the bright sunlight. The mornings were spent in wandering from camp to camp, attending to the bodily needs of the scattered flock. I knew every bush, every pool, every granite boulder, by its age-old prehistoric name, with its legends and dream-time secrets, and its gradual inevitable change. There was no loneliness."

"Your true gentlewoman does not sit down and weep and say "I've never done such things"—she simply "does" and no more about it."

"There are a few fortunate races that have been endowed with cheerfulness as their main characteristic, the Australian Aborigine and the Irish being among these."

"No man or woman, who tries to pursue an ideal in his or her own way, is without enemies."

"Our road is the Road of Yesterday and the Road of Today, for Yesterday and Today are still the same."

"The Australian native can withstand all the reverses of nature, fiendish droughts and sweeping floods, horrors of thirst and enforced starvation—but he cannot withstand civilization."

"Surely the world we live in is but the world that lives in us?"

"Let us candidly confess our indebtedness to the needle. How many hours of sorrow has it softened, how many bitter irritations calmed, how many confused thoughts reduced to order, how many life-plans sketched in purple!"

"There is, between the sexes, a law of incessant reciprocal action, of which God avails himself in the constitution of the family, when He permits brothers and sisters to nestle about the same hearthstone. Its ministration is essential to the best educational results. Our own educational institutions should rest upon this divine basis."

"In the order of the universe we find that the use of mosses is primarily to other and more . They are spread at the roots of trees, and by their depth keeps the warmth about them in winter, and the moisture in summer, which are necessary to their growth. But when they grow on their trunks and branches, mosses injure trees, by clogging their breathing pores. We next find that mosses are useful to the insect tribe, countless numbers of which find homes among their branches, and roam about in their shades as in mighty forests, and look with their thousand eyes upon the wonders of their gauzy leaves, and sun their wings of purple and gold, and burnish their shining armour upon the polished columns of their urns. Over her nest the constructs a dome of moss; and ascending higher yet, we find the bird's nest "built of wool and hay and moss.""

"Great Western Land whose mighty breast Between two oceans finds its rest, Begirt with storm on either side, And washed by strong Pacific tide; The knowledge of thy wondrous birth Gave balance to the rounded earth. In sea of darkness thou didst stand Now first in light, my Western Land."

"In the of Linnæus mosses were placed among the . It is true that the various parts of their are so small as only to be fully examined by the help of a , but the flower and fruit as a whole may on most species be easily seen."

"Let a neatness as exquisite as womanly, and as polished as that of Charlotte Brontë, pervade not only our homes, but consecrate our own personal appearance; then may we safely wear the livery of the schools."

"There have always been women, from the days of the Queen of Sheba, who sought out wisdom, who made great sacrifices, and endured arduous toil to come to a fountain-head of knowledge. This 19th century, these last fifty years, have brought to women, to large numbers of women, opportunities before accessible only to the gifted few. Now these streams flow freely, and women come in throngs. But does the draught quicken them to new life? Culture is more than the acquisition of knowledge. To bear fruit, learning must pass into life. It is the touch of man upon nature that makes art; and as the highest art is a going back to nature, having received it, having been nourished upon it, to return it stamped with man’s impress, so the finest fruit of learning must be personality. The soul is the supreme power always. To enlarge its kingdom, to bring warring elements under its control — this is the supreme task of education. Intellectual knowledge is so much dead matter until it is vitalized by a union with the soul’s wisdom. To foster this union, to provide material for the nourishment of the spirit, to train the mind to appreciate and to choose and govern — these are the great fundamental tasks which lie at the root of all education."

"We claim for women a share of the educational opportunities offered to man, because we believe that they will never be thoroughly taught until they are taught at the same time and in the same classes."

"I have seen no Hindu who seemed to me prepared intellectually and morally for the freedom he would find in American society; nor are Americans prepared for the air of innocence and exaltation worn by very undeserving Orientals."

"Let woman once reject the absurd notion that she was created for happiness, let her constitute herself instead a creator of it, let her accept with joy the fact that this is a working-day world; then she will no longer strive to escape from labor, discipline, or sorrow, but will gladly hail each in its turn as part of God's appointed teaching, a shadow crossing the sunshine to show that it is bright."

"Woman is quick to recognize genius, to listen when wisdom speaks. She chatters, to be sure, in the presence of fools; but when earnest men come to know the value of her enthusiasm, they will never be willing to lose it."

"Influence follows close upon the heels of character; and whatever we are, that we shall in the end be acknowledged to be."

"I cannot help directing your attention to the significant fact that while the word "mistress," applied to a woman, serves at once to mark her out for reprobation, there is no corresponding term which, applied to man, produces the same effect; and this because the interests of the state are still paramount to the interests of the soul itself."

"I thought I knew how corrupt modem society could be; but I did not know how unsoundness had darted to its very core till I began to read law, and to understand the estimate which that puts upon women and chastity."

"Infidelity, like death, admits of no degrees."

"Quand on veut dessécher un marais, on ne fait pas en voter les grenouilles!"

"For ages happiness has been represented as a huge precious stone, impossible to find, which people seek for hopelessly. It is not so — happiness is a mosaic, composed of a thousand little stones, which, separately and of themselves, have little value, but which, united with art form a graceful design. Set the mosaic carefully, and you have a beautiful ornament; learn to understand intelligently the passing enjoyments which chance, which your character gives you, or which Heaven sends you, and you have an agreeable existence. Why always look to the horizon when there are such fine roses in the garden you live in?"

"Good taste is the modestly of the mind; that is why it cannot be either imitated or acquired."

"There is only one proper way to wear a beautiful dress: to forget you are wearing it."

"Les esprits dont la mission est de détruire les préjugés, sont précisément ceux qui ont la plus de préjugés, et qui les professent avec le plus d'aveuglement."

"Hope, alas! is our waking dream."

"Love is the gift that brings us nearer Heaven Than any other gift the world can hold, And perfect Love is nearest perfect bliss."