Mary Livermore Quotes

to working women, as indeed to all women, the ballot is a necessity. It is the only synonym of legal equity that a republican government can know.

It is more than fifty years since Margaret Fuller, standing, as she said, “in the sunny noon of life,” wrote a little book, which she launched on the current of thought and society. It was entitled “Women in the Nineteenth Century”; and as the truths it proclaimed and the reforms it advocated were far in advance of public acceptance, its appearance was the signal for an immediate widespread newspaper controversy, that raged with great violence. I was young then, and as I took the book from the hands of the bookseller, wondering what the contents of the thin little volume could be, to provoke so wordy a strife, I opened the first page. My attention was immediately arrested, and a train of thought started

Anna Dickinson, in the Philadelphia Mint, working for a pittance and making impassioned speeches on various occasions for the enslaved black man, was regarded as a nuisance. But Anna Dickinson on the platform, with impassioned speech and fervid moral earnestness, pleading the cause of the slave and receiving $100 and $200 a night for the service; Anna Dickinson in the Connecticut and New Hampshire Republican campaigns, thrilling both States with her eloquent utterances, the acknowledged power that won the victory in both for the Republican party, became the heroine of the hour, and was hailed as the Joan d’Are of the nineteenth century.

The ancient commercial dimensions of the earth are swept away forever, and competition is now world-wide. This will compel the thorough training of American working people in industrial education, based on art and science. We need technical schools as we find them in the Old World, abundant and open alike to old and young, rich and poor, and as free to women as to men.

Nature has so constituted us that the sexes act and react upon each other, making every “woman’s cause” a man’s cause, and every man’s cause a woman’s cause

Above all, at the present time, should women cultivate what they grievously lack, a fine esprit de corps. They should stand together in a solidarity that can not be shaken by difference of opinion, nor weakened by jealousy, nor undermined by the cruel gossip and scandal of the world. “Any stone is good enough to throw at a dog,” says Frances Power Cobbe, ” and there is yet a spirit in the world that regards any slur, innuendo, or hint of baseness as legitimate if uttered concerning a woman.” “the woman Thou gavest me, she gave me of the tre and I did eat,” is still the pitiful plea of the shirk and the coward. It should not be echoed by women, nor exalted by them to the dignity of an accusation. I lack language in which to express my sense of reprobation of the course pursued by those women who, from their soft and easy homes, where they are anchored in the love of manly husbands, enter the arena of public life only to beat back their sisters who seek larger opportunities than suffice for themselves; who make their own opinions and wishes the measure of all women’s needs, and cry out to legislatures and courts, parliaments and congresses: “Hold, enough! Concede to women no more of their demands, for we have all the rights we want!” “Whenever a wrong is done To the humblest and the weakest ‘neath the all-beholding sun, That wrong is also done to us, and they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all the race.”

the last statue of w:Anne Whitney, unveiled a few months ago, the ideal statue of the Norseman Leif, the son of Eric, is regarded by man competent critics as the most exquisite work of art that has come from the studio of any American sculptor.

The very highest function of woman is to raise and train the family; it is the very highest function of man also.

the prophecies of evil always inspired by a growing reform

Our social structure has been based on the theory that “all men support all women,” a theory which has never been true, and which is farther from being true to-day than ever before.

Some one once asked Charles Sumner what bribes had been offered him in the course of his political career. “What bribe!” he replied. “No bribe has ever been offered me. I have never been solicited, with promise of payment, to pursue any course whatever. ” It could not have bene otherwise with Sumner. He as not a man to solicit temptation, or to dally with it, and people knew it. Usually, the people who are tempted are known to be in the market with principles to sell. But Charles Sumner, like some other great men of course country, had not a reputation of this kind.

Obedience to the behests of duty gives peace, even when love is lacking; and peace is a diviner thing than happiness.

Children require simple food, early hours for retiring, and abundance of sleep, as well as freedom from social and religious excitements.

What shall we do with our daughters?" is really the sum and substance of what, I popular phase, is called "the woman question.

In short, the training of our boys should be toward manliness, — towards gentle-manliness; so that they will be tender to children, courteous to women, helpful to the unable, and quick to recognize those in need of assistance. They should be so strong morally as quickly to repel temptation; so trained in the habit of doing right that it will not be easy for them to do wrong.