Great Throughts Treasury

"The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos."

"The United States is...a warning rather than an example to the world."

"The nearer society approaches to divine order, the less separation will there be in the characters, duties, and pursuits of men and women. Women will not become less gentle and graceful, but men will become more so. Women will not neglect the care and education of their children, but men will find themselves ennobled and refined by sharing those duties with them; and will receive, in return, co-operation and sympathy in the discharge of various other duties, now deemed inappropriate to women. The more women become rational companions, partners in business and in thought, as well as in affection and amusement, the more highly will men appreciate home."

"There was a time when all these things would have passed me by, like the flitting figures of a theatre, sufficient for the amusement of an hour. But now, I have lost the power of looking merely on the surface."

"There was a time when all these things would have passed me by, like the flitting figures of a theatre, sufficient for the amusement of an hour. But now, I have lost the power of looking merely on the surface. Everything seems to me to come from the Infinite, to be filled with the Infinite, to be tending toward the Infinite. Do I see crowds of men hastening to extinguish a fire? I see not merely uncouth garbs, and fantastic, flickering lights, of lurid hue, like a trampling troop of gnomes?but straightway my mind is filled with thoughts about mutual helpfulness, human sympathy, the common bond of brotherhood, and the mysteriously deep foundations on which society rests; or rather, on which it now reels and totters."

"Unwillingness to acknowledge whatever is good in religion foreign to our own has always been a very common trait of human nature; but it seems to me neither generous nor just."

"Virtue maketh men on the earth famous, in their graves illustrious, in the heavens immortal."

"They [the slaves] have stabbed themselves for freedom?jumped into the waves for freedom?starved for freedom?fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot?and their tyrants have been their historians!"

"Thy treasures of gold are dim with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold; thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear the crack of the whip, and the footsteps of fear."

"We do love beauty at first sight; and we do cease to love it, if it is not accompanied by amiable qualities."

"While we bestow our earnest disapprobation on the system of slavery, let us not flatter ourselves that we are in reality any better than our brethren of the South. Thanks to our soul and climate, and the early exertions of the Quakers, the form of slavery does not exist among us; but the very spirit of the hateful and mischievous thing is here in all its strength. The manner in which we use what power we have, gives us ample reason to be grateful that the nature of our institutions does not entrust us with more. Our prejudice against colored people is even more inveterate than it is at the south."

"Woman stock is rising in the market. I shall not live to see women vote, but I'll come and rap on the ballot box."

"You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make an honest effort to confer that pleasure on others? Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy."

"We pay our domestic generous wages, with which they can purchase as many Christmas gown as they please; a process far better for their characters, as well as our own, than to receive their clothing as a charity, after being deprived of just payment for their labor. I have never known an instance where the "pangs of maternity " did not meet with requisite assistance; and here at the North, after we have helped the mothers, we do not sell the babies. (correspondence with Mrs. Mason)"

"We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate."

"Yours for the unshackled exercise of every faculty by every human being."