“If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.”
“Fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered.”
“What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honorable, than that of teaching?”
“For my own part, I had rather suffer any inconvenience from having to work occasionally in chambers and kitchen... than witness the subservience in which the menial class is held in Europe.”
“Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.”
“Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.”
“If there is any country on earth where the course of true love may be expected to run smooth, it is America.”
“Any one must see at a glance that if men and women marry those whom they do not love, they must love those whom they do not marry.”
“The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so.”
“But is it not the fact that religion emanates from the nature, from the moral state of the individual? Is it not therefore true that unless the nature be completely exercised, the moral state harmonized, the religion cannot be healthy?”
“Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.”