Women Activists From The United States

"There is no language that love does not speak"

"How fleeting the sorrows of youth, how slight the foundations on which the young build towers of despair"

"The world needs divine power in every human being the recognition of which is the secret to all success and happiness"

"Oh you who read some song I have sung What know you of the soul from whence it sprung"

"It is impossible to pursue a successful literary career and follow the advice of all one's 'best friends'. I feel compelled to follow the light which my own intellect & judgement cast upon my way, rather than any one of the many conflicting rays which other minds would lend me."

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone. For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer; Sigh, it is lost on the air. The echoes bound to a joyful sound, But shrink from voicing care."

"Rejoice, and men will seek you; Grieve, and they turn and go. They want full measure of all your pleasure, But they do not need your woe. Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them all. There are none to decline your nectared wine, But alone you must drink life's gall."

"There is room in the halls of pleasure For a long and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow aisles of pain."

"Here, on this side of the grave, Here, should we labor and love."

"So many gods, so many creeds; So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs."

"You never can tell when you do an act Just what the result will be; But with every deed you are sowing a seed, Though the harvest you may not see. Each kindly act is an acorn dropped In God's productive soil; You may not know, yet the tree shall grow And shelter the brows that toil.You never can tell what your thoughts will do In bringing you hate or love; For thoughts are things, and their airy wings Are swifter than carrier doves. They follow the law of the universe — Each thing must create its kind; And they speed o'er the track to bring you back Whatever went out from your mind."

"I'm no reformer; for I see more light Than darkness in the world; mine eyes are quick To catch the first dim radiance of the dawn, And slow to note the cloud that threatens storm."

"I find a rapture linked with each despair, Well worth the price of anguish. I detect More good than evil in humanity. Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes, And men grow better as the world grows old."

"There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, Can circumvent or hinder or control The firm resolve of a determined soul. Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great; All things give way before it soon or late. What obstacle can stay the mighty force Of the sea seeking river in its course, Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait?"

"To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men."

"All love that has not friendship for its base, Is like a mansion built upon the sand."

"Who would attain to summits still and fair, Must nerve himself through valleys of despair."

"Who climbs the mountain does not always climb. The winding road slants downward many a time; Yet each descent is higher than the last."

"Divine the Powers that on this trio wait. Supreme their conquest, over Time and Fate. Love, Work, and Faith — these three alone are great."

"Give of thy love, nor wait to know the worth Of what thou lovest; and ask no returning. And wheresoe'er thy pathway leads on earth, There thou shalt find the lamp of love-light burning."

"Give, and thou shalt receive. Give thoughts of cheer, Of courage and success, to friend and stranger. And from a thousand sources, far and near, Strength will be sent thee in thy hour of danger."

"Breathe "God," in any tongue — it means the same; LOVE ABSOLUTE: Think, feel, absorb the thought; Shut out all else; until a subtle flame (A spark from God's creative centre caught) Shall permeate your being, and shall glow, Increasing in its splendour, till, YOU KNOW."

"Not to the curious or impatient soul That in the start, demands the end be shown, And at each step, stops waiting for a sign; But to the tireless toiler toward the goal, Shall the great miracles of God be known And life revealed, immortal and divine."

"If fallacies come knocking at my door, I'd rather feed, and shelter full a score, Than hide behind the black portcullis, doubt, And run the risk of barring one Truth out.And if pretension for a time deceive, And prove me one too ready to believe, Far less my shame, than if by stubborn act, I brand as lie, some great colossal Fact."

"Look to the Great Eternal Cause And not to any man, for light. Look in; and learn the wrong, and right, From your own soul's unwritten laws. And when you question, or demur, Let Love be your Interpreter."

"You may choose your word like a connoisseur, And polish it up with art, But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays, Is the word that comes from the heart.You may work on your word a thousand weeks, But it will not glow like one That all unsought, leaps forth white hot, When the fountains of feeling run."

"Each mental wave we send out from the mind, Or base, or kind, Completes its circuit, then with added force Seeks its own source."

"Affirm the body, beautiful and whole, The earth-expression of immortal soul.Affirm the mind, the messenger of the hour, To speed between thee and the source of power.Affirm the spirit, the Eternal I — Of this great trinity no part deny."

"Body and mind, and spirit, all combine To make the Creature, human and divine.Of this great trinity no part deny. Affirm, affirm, the Great Eternal I."

"There is no sudden entrance into Heaven. Slow is the ascent by the path of Love."

"Hell is wherever Love is not, and Heaven Is Love's location. No dogmatic creed, No austere faith based on ignoble fear Can lead thee into realms of joy and peace. Unless the humblest creatures on the earth Are bettered by thy loving sympathy Think not to find a Paradise beyond."

"Between the finite and the infinite The missing link of Love has left a void. Supply the link, and earth with Heaven will join In one continued chain of endless life."

"No question is ever settled Until it is settled right."

"Shri Guru Granth Sahib is a source book, an expression of man's loneliness, his aspiration, his longings, his cry to God and his hunger for communication with that being. I have studied the scriptures of other great religions, but I do not find elsewhere the same power of appeal to the heart and mind as I feel here in these volumes. They are compact in spite of their length, and are a revelation of the vast reach of the human heart varying from the most noble concept of God to the recognition and indeed the insistence upon the practical needs of the human body. There is something strangely modern about these scriptures and this puzzled me until I learnt that they are in fact comparatively modern, compiled as late as the sixteenth century, when explorers were beginning to discover the globe upon which we all live as a single entity divided only by arbitrary lines of our own making. Perhaps this sense of unity is a source of power I find in these volumes. They speak to persons of any religion or of none. They speak for the human heart and the searching mind..."

"The young do not know enough to be prudent, and so they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation."

"The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it."

"There was an old abbot in one temple and he said something of which I think often and it was this, that when men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place."

"Ah well, perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked."

"Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors. They are the oldest civilized people on earth. Their civilization passes through phases but its basic characteristics remain the same. They yield, they bend to the wind, but they never break."

"The secret of joy in work is contained in one word — excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it."

"I am an inveterate homemaker, it is at once my pleasure, my recreation, and my handicap. Were I a man, my books would have been written in leisure, protected by a wife and a secretary and various household officials. As it is, being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking."

"There is something to be said for losing one’s possessions, after nothing can be done about it. I had loved my Nanking home and the little treasures it had contained, the lovely garden I had made, my life with friends and students. Well, that was over. I had nothing at all now except the old clothes I stood in. I should have felt sad, and I was quite shocked to realize that I did not feel sad at all. On the contrary, I had a lively sense of adventure merely at being alive and free, even of possessions. No one expected anything of me. I had no obligations, no duties, no tasks. I was nothing but a refugee, someone totally different from the busy young woman I had been. I did not even care that the manuscript of my novel was lost. Since everything else was gone, why not that?"

"The wild winds had been sown and the whirlwinds were gathering... and I was reaping what I had not sown... None of us could escape the history of the centuries before any of us had been born, and with which we had nothing to do. We had not, I think, ever committed even a mild unkindness against a Chinese, and certainly we had devoted ourselves to justice for them, we had taken sides against our own race again and again for their sakes, sensitive always to injustices which others had committed and were still committing. But nothing mattered today, neither the kindness nor the cruelty. We were in hiding for our lives because we were white."

"Chinese are wise in comprehending without many words what is inevitable and inescapable and therefore only to be borne."

"In any war a victory means another war, and yet another, until some day inevitably the tides turn, and the victor is the vanquished, and the circle reverses itself, but remains nevertheless a circle. … I came home more torn in heart than any child should be, for I saw that each side was right as well as wrong, and I yearned over both in a helpless fashion, unable to see how, history being what it was, anything now could be done."

"Every event has had its cause, and nothing, not the least wind that blows, is accident or causeless. To understand what happens now one must find the cause, which may be very long ago in its beginning, but is surely there, and therefore a knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future. Fate, Mr. Kung taught me, is not the blind superstition or helplessness that waits stupidly for what may happen. Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if he does not resign himself to ignorance."

"I became mentally bifocal, and so I learned early to understand that there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety. The damage such perception did to me I have felt ever since, although damage may be too dark a word, for it merely meant that I could never belong entirely to one side of any question. To be a Communist would be absurd to me, as absurd as to be entirely anything and equally impossible. I straddled the globe too young."

"In the midst of possible world war, of wholesale destruction, I find my only question this: are there enough people now who believe? Is there time enough left for the wise to act? It is a contest between ignorance and death, or wisdom and life. My faith in humanity stands firm."

"The common sense of people will surely prove to them someday that mutual support and cooperation are only sensible for the security and happiness of all. Such faith keeps me continually ready and purposeful with energy to do what one person can towards shaping the environment in which the human being can grow with freedom."

"Like Confucius of old, I am absorbed in the wonder of earth, and the life upon it, and I cannot think of heaven and the angels. I have enough for this life. If there is no other life, than this one has been enough to make it worth being born, myself a human being. With so profound a faith in the human heart and its power to grow toward the light, I find here reason and cause enough for hope and confidence in the future of mankind."