Woman of the world

“ It is not enough that they should be what their mothers were—they must be more. The spirit of the times calls on women for a higher order of character and life. Will they heed the call? Will they emancipate themselves from the fetters of custom and fashion, and come up, a glorious company, to the possession of a vigorous, virtuous, noble womanhood, that shall shed new light upon the world and point the way to a divine life?
Woman's influence is the chief anchor of society, and this influence is purifying the world, and the work she has already accomplished will last forever. ”

“ Miss Anthony, I am glad to stand beside you while I tell these women from the other side of the world who has brought them here. This, ladies of Europe, is your great prototype—this the woman who has trodden the trackless fields of the pioneer till the thorns are buried in roses; this, the woman who has lived to hear the hisses turn to dulcet strains of music; the woman who has dared to plead for every good cause under heaven, who opened her door to the fleeing slave and claimed the outcast for a brother ”

“ Whether as the ruler of a nation or the ruler of a cottage, a woman’s mind rules in its own inimitable way. In the realm of heart, woman is the queen and in that realm there can rule no king. Of our many great American heroes and statesmen, only one has been honored in having had accorded to him the heart of woman—all Americans worship at his shrine. ”

“ She will realize the mission of woman's body and the holiness of all its parts. She will dance the changing life of nature, showing how each part is transformed into the other. From all parts of her body shall shine radiant intelligence, bringing to the world the message of the thoughts and aspirations of thousands of women. She shall dance the freedom of woman. ”

“ But the fact remains that it was largely through the inspired vision, which looked past the entanglements of sense into the pure heart and transparent soul of an idealized womanhood, that the long-enduring sex came into its intellectual kingdom. To the old ties of interest, passion, and habit, were added those of the intellect and spirit. In this new contact of intelligences society had its birth, women took their rightful places, and the world found a new regenerating force. ”

“ It is the woman who sells herself in the street. And who is this, with upturned eyes of fathomless love, the radiant paleness of ecstasy transfusing her countenance, heaven flooding her soul, the world a forgotten toy beneath her feet? It is the woman who, in silence and secrecy, gives herself to God. So capacious of extremes is the feminine spirit. ”

“ There came the day when, in some amazing fashion, she sensed within herself the thoughts and passions and dreams of all the women of all the world; the mute, inexpressible yearnings of motherhood; the desires and sufferings of millions; the reaching up, with a soft, nestling rush, into the arms of God, of nature. ”

“ What woman is in any nation or age, the people of that nation or age will be. Noble women give nobility to the sphere of action and influence in which they move. Genius, worth, mental and moral power, owe more to woman than to all things else. If I wished to bless the world, I should bless woman. ”

“ Her looks mark her everywhere as a supremely happy woman, and she goes out into the world marked with that strange, deep, grand impress of motherhood and womanhood, which has always made the true woman not only a working-mother, but a love-crowned queen! ”

“ She makes every allowance for human nature, [Pg 81] every concession to the necessities of temperament, every recognition of the human need for freedom, and yet makes the love of one man and one woman seem the highest ideal, a thing worth striving and waiting and suffering for.
She cherishes the spiritual magic of sex as the finest achievement of the race, and sees it as the central and guiding principle in our social and economic evolution. ”

“ I see her asking that this personality may be impressed upon her nation. I see her speaking her soul from platforms, preaching in pulpits of a life of which this is the shadow. I see her pleading before courts, using her brains to solve the knotty questions of the law. Woman's sphere is the wide world, her sceptre the mind that God has given her, her kingdom the largest place that she has the brains to fill and the will to hold. So is woman influencing the world, and as her sphere widens the world grows better. ”

“ When the world discovers a woman whose desire for society is not to satisfy her vanity, or fill a shallow soul with selfish pleasures, but her desire is to scatter jewels of love and gems of inspiration to make rich and beautiful the lives of the common folk, it crowns her in the temple of its heart and calls her an angel sent of God. ”

“ This is a digression, but, it came from contemplating the singular beauty of one woman's soul, among the tarnished multitude of victims to that social levity and those superficial virtues that society honors, and with which our modern fashionable women persuade themselves they are doing marvels in the world of good. ”

“ We see yet another woman—a king’s daughter—stoop to the river’s edge to lift in her arms the child of destiny. Three women working in unconscious federation—and lo! a race of men is freed and a kingdom builded in the wilderness!”
What the world wants of woman to-day is the utmost development of the positive feminine moral force in her spirit and her life. Woman has been said to be the conscience of the world, and there is profound truth in that. ”

“ We must thank the general enlightenment and independence of woman (which we may now regard as a fait accompli) that both these forces are now at work in the world, and it is fair to demand from them for the twentieth century a higher type of civilization than any attained in the nineteenth. Religion, science, art, economics, have all needed the feminine flavor; and literature, the expression of what is permanent and best in all of these, may be gauged at any time to measure the strength of the feminine ingredient. ”

“ Woman as reconstructor of domestic economics, woman as a destructive political agent of enormous potency, woman as worker, woman as dancer, woman as statistician, woman as organizer of the forces of labor—in these it has been the intent to show the real woman of today and of tomorrow. ”

“ Says Ellen Key, in The Woman Movement, "These cerebral, amaternal women must obviously be accorded the freedom of finding the domestic life, with its limited but intensive exercise of power, meagre beside the feeling of power which they enjoy as public personalities, as consummate [Pg 88] women of the world, as talented professionals. ”

“ But, if maintained within rational bounds, this reverence for women in general and for the best type of woman in particular must be regarded as one of the great binding forces of humanity, a thing which has accomplished perhaps more than aught else for the world’s refinement and advance. ”

“ But let us not confound intelligent women with pedants and pretenders, or great women with small ones on a pedestal of any sort, self-erected or other. All this I trust will be made clear by illustration in these pages, together with the fact that the intellects of at least a few women have been very much awake in all the golden ages of the world, and exercised on many of the same problems that confront them to-day. The question of equality has been discussed in every period. ”

“ It would also be difficult to exaggerate the influence which our radically different estimate of woman has had upon Western civilization. And here we have to consider not only woman's own direct contributions to progress, but also the indirect influence of our regard for woman, not as an inferior and a plaything, but as a comrade and helpmeet. ”

“ How many of our own women, with their myriads of books, lectures, and clubs, their university courses, their versatile intellects, and their unlimited freedom, are likely to be quoted two or three thousand years hence, and set in the firmament to live forever?
To be sure, we stand upon a higher moral and social level, we have more knowledge, our field of [Pg 50] action is broader, our ideals of virtue are higher, and we have privileges and pleasures of which they never dreamed. It is quite impossible to put ourselves on the simple plane of these women. The world has grown old and sophisticated ”

“ By a lady we mean a woman of education, cultivation, and refinement, of liberal tastes and ideas, who, without any very material additions or changes, would be recognized as a lady in any circle of the Old World or the New.
The existence of such a class is a fact peculiar to American society, a plain result of the new principles involved in the doctrine of universal equality. ”

“ As you well know, the women of the outer world take the lead in all humanitarian work, because they are naturally more sensitive and sympathetic than men. The women of this inner world are even more inclined to extend a helping hand to the distressed, and they are not handicapped by usages which restrict the influence of the woman of the outer world. ”

“ It is my belief—yes, and my prophecy, should I die before it happens—that, when my sex shall achieve its rights, there will be ten eloquent women where there is now one eloquent man. Thus far, no woman in the world has ever once spoken out her whole heart and her whole mind. The mistrust and disapproval of the vast bulk of society throttles us, as with two gigantic hands at our throats! We mumble a few weak words, and leave a thousand better ones unsaid. ”

“ You need not go back four thousand years for
heroines. The world is filled with them to-day.
They do not belong to any nation, nor to any religion,
nor exclusively to any race. Wherever woman is
found, they are found. ”

“ You women have a way of understanding without thinking. Woman was created out of God's own fancy. Man, He had to hammer into shape." ”

“ Her mission is not to enhance the masculine spirit, but to express the feminine; hers is not to preserve a man-made world, but to create a human world by the infusion of the feminine element into all of its activities. ”

“ It is written in the true spirit, and evinces extensive observation of society, a clear insight into the evils surrounding and pressing down her sex, and a glorious determination to expose and remove them. Read her work. She will win a willing way to the heart and home of woman, and her mission will be found to be one of beneficence and love. Truly, woman has her work and her reward.”—American Spectator. ”

“ She stands now at the gateway of this new era of American civilization. In her hands must be moulded the strength, the wit, the statesmanship, the morality, all the psychic force, the social and economic intercourse of that era. To be alive at such an epoch is a privilege, to be a woman then is sublime. ”

“ And slowly she lifted her glance to mine; and never before had I felt the full glory of those eyes, the full melody of that deep voice.
And so, I end as I began, as life begins and ends—with a woman. In a woman's arms we enter life; in a woman's arms we get the courage and strength to bear it; in a woman's arms we leave it. And as for the span between—the business, profession, career—how colorless, how meaningless it would be but for her! ”

“ She must strive and suffer, in the society in which she is living, for all that is feminine in life, must with a wave of her hand attenuate the fierceness of the struggle for existence, and must brighten the gloomy night of human suffering with her gentle presence. ”

“ Viewed in this light, even the small, frittering cares of women’s life—the attention to buttons, trimmings, thread, and sewing-silk—may be an expression of their patriotism and their religion. A noble-hearted woman puts a noble meaning into even the commonplace details of life. ”

“ Then I wished—with all my strength—that women, all women, might realize Womanhood at last; its power and pride and place in life; that they might see their duty as mothers of the world—to love and care for everyone alive; that they might see their dirty to men—to choose only the best, and then to bear and rear better ones; that they might see their duty as human beings, and come right out into full life and work and happiness! ”

“ The spiritual force, slowly unfolding, that has uplifted, and is still uplifting, womanhood, is the foundation of woman's claim that the further progress of humanity is bound up with her restoration to a position of freedom and human equality. ”

“ Looking and listening, "Here," thought I, "is another jewel in the crown of womanhood, to radiate and glorify the lives of all." I have such an intense pride of sex that the triumphs of woman in art, literature, oratory, science, or song rouse my enthusiasm as nothing else can. ”

“ Already some women to whom a profession or mental eminence has given exceptional freedom [Pg 89] show us in society that women can be free and yet be sweet. Indeed they almost demonstrate the Feminist contention that women must be free before they are sweet, for are not these women—of whom all of us can name a few—the noblest and most desirable of their kind? The New Woman is like a freshly painted railing: whoever touches it will stain his hands, but the railing will dry in time. ”

“ Although she was young and beautiful and accomplished, and the smiles of fortune shone upon her, yet her native modesty and worth made her unconscious of her own attractions. Her heart was the seat of all the softer virtues which ennoble and dignify the character of woman. ”

“ She was a brilliant woman, a woman with the brains, the will, the tenacious strength of a man, a woman who made rules for herself, and quietly and firmly rebelled against the position which tradition and nature had allotted to her sex. ”

“ The knowledge that she must have to complete her womanhood the woman should have gained only from the life of her dreams—the life that is beyond that old, old, open door through which she could not pass alone. In the companionship, sympathy, strength, protection, and love, of that one who was to cross with her the threshold of the door that God set open in the beginning, she should have gained the knowledge of life that would ripen her girlhood into womanhood. ”