France was constantly in her thoughts.
"The morale of the Commune, that which has commended it to good people, has undoubtedly been a supposed resistance to the return of absolutism, which the Versailles Government was supposed covertly to represent.... No matter what advantage of reason the Commune may have had over the Versailles Government, the Commune committed a civil crime in attempting military enforcement of its political opinions. Such was the crime which our South committed and which we resisted as one defends one's own life. No overt military act of ours gave them the advantage of a casus belli. They differed from us and determined to coerce us forcibly. In that weltering mass of ruin and corruption which was Paris, what lessons lie of the utter folly and futility of mutual murder! What hearts of brothers estranged which time would have harmonized! What hecatombs of weltering corpses poisoning the earth which industry should make wholesome! What women demonized by passion, forgetting all their woman's lore and skill, the appointed givers of life speeding death and reaping the bitter fruit themselves! With this terrible picture before us, let no civilized nation from henceforth and forever admit or recognize the instrumentality of war as worthy of Christian society. Let the fact of human brotherhood be taught to the babe in his cradle, let it be taught to the despot on his throne. Let it be the basis and foundation of education and legislation, the bond of high and low, of rich and poor...."
"May 27. I am fifty-two years old this day and must regard this year as in some sense the best of my life. The great joy of the Peace Idea has unfolded itself to me.... I have got at better methods of working in the practical matters at which I do work, and believe more than ever in patience, labor, and sticking to one's own idea of work. Study, book-work, and solitary thinking and writing show us only one side of what we study. Practical life and intercourse with others supply the other side. If I may sit at work on this day next year, I hope that my peace matter will have assumed a practical and useful form, and that I may have worked out my conception worthily.... I pray that neither Louis Napoleon nor the Bourbons may return to feed upon France, but that merciful measures, surely of God's appointing, may heal her deadly wounds and uplift her prostrate heart. She must learn that the doctrine of self is irreligious. The Commune surely knew this just as little as did Louis Napoleon. I want to keep eyesight enough to read Greek and German, and my teeth for clear speaking and good digestion."
"Paul says: 'Ye that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak,' but now we that are weak bear the infirmities of the strong."
"Peace meeting at the Club. Read in Greek first part of the eighth chapter of Matthew; the account given of the centurion seems very striking in the Greek. The contrast of his Western mind with the Eastern subtleties of Jew and Greek seems to have struck Christ. He supposed Christ's power over unseen things to be like his own control over things committed to his authority. Then Christ began, perhaps, to see that the other nations of the world would profit by his work and doctrine before his Jewish brethren."
"My first presidency at the New England Woman's Club.... I do not shine in presiding over a business meeting and some others can do much better than I. Still I think it best to fulfil all expected functions of ordinary occasions, living and learning."
"... Negro Christianity. It is something of a very definite and touching character—all forgiving, all believing, making a decided religious impression of its own—the heart so ripe, the intellectual part so little made out, like a fruit which might be all pulp and no fibre."