John Seely Hart

“ But do you ever realize that she feels, not loved for herself in return, but for her deeds, and weeps silently under the consciousness that when her lonely, loving life ceases on earth, not she, but her offices of kindness will be missed and mourned for? ”

“ Love is the instinct of the female heart: almost every woman who has lived to see thirty years, has felt the outgoings of affection’s well-spring; but hers is not often the power of choosing, though it is of refusing. ”

“ If the histories of all old maids were written, what disclosures of female heroism would be made! In how many cases could celibacy be traced, not to want of personal or mental attractions; nor of admiration or love; but to that heroic nature which, though capable of the deepest and most enduring passion, has the fortitude to live alone, rather than be bound, not united, to an uncongenial being. And if “He that ruleth his spirit be greater than he that taketh a city,” surely she that ruleth her heart is greater than she that taketh a name for the sake of a name ”

“ Rare are such cases, and yet few as they are, they infect the general mind, so that old maid, thus considered, is a noun of multitude, including all who choose or are destined to live single lives. And how many unhappy marriages are the consequence of this opprobrium! ”

“ And who that will take off the glasses of prejudice, look around, and call up recollections of domestic life either at home, or in other homes, can fail to discover some female form and face—possibly attenuated and wrinkled by time and care—moving about the house from morning till night, ever bent on some errand of good to its inmates: now nursing the sick ”