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This west coast makes me remember with pleasure the free, unbounded plains of Patagonia; yet, with the true spirit of contradiction, I cannot forget how sublime is the silence of the forest.

The fact that the liberty of the press may be abused by miscreant purveyors of scandal does not make any the less necessary the immunity of the press from previous restraint in dealing with offical misconduct.

The question is whether a statute authorizing such proceedings in restraint of publication is consistent with the conception of the liberty of the press as historically conceived and guaranteed.

Every man hath two birth-days: two days, at least, in every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration.

In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel.

My household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood.

Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal.

A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money that we paid for it.

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will

As the racial distinction of humanity lies in its social relation, so we find the distinctive gains and losses of humanity to lie also in its social relation. We are more affected by our relation to each other than by our physical environment.

Economic independence is a relative condition at best.

Language is our largest common medium, and leads on into literature, which is but preserved speech.

Little by little, very slowly, and with most unjust and cruel opposition, at cost of all life holds most dear, it is being gradually established by many martyrdoms that human work is woman’s as well as man’s.

That any living woman should prefer it to home and husband, to love and motherhood, throws a fierce light on what women must have suffered for lack of freedom before.

The basic condition of human life is union; the organic social relation, the interchange of functional service, wherein the individual is most advantaged, not by his own exertions for his own goods, but by the exchange of his exertions with the exertions of others for goods produced by them together.

The brain of man is the social organ, the organ of communication. Through it flows the current of thought, whereby we are enabled to work together.

The inevitable trend of human life is toward higher civilization.

The progress of society rests upon the increasing collectivity of human labor.

The spirit of personal independence in the women of to-day is sure proof that a change has come.

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

To be surrounded by beautiful things has much influence upon the human creature: to make beautiful things has more.

To specialize any form of labor is a step up: to organize it is another step.

To teach, to rule, to make, to decorate, to distribute,—these are not sex-functions: they are race-functions.

What we do modifies us more than what is done to us.