Women in health are the hope of the nation. Men who exercise a controlling influence—the master spirits—with a few exceptions, have had country-born mothers. They transmit to their sons those traits of character—moral, intellectual, and physical—which give stability to institutions, and promote order, security, and justice.—Dr. J.V.C. Smith.
Man has subdued the world, but woman has subdued man. Mind and muscle have won his victories; love and loveliness have gained hers. No monarch has been so great, no peasant so lowly, that he has not been glad to lay his best at the feet of a woman.—Gail Hamilton.
American ladies are known abroad for two distinguishing traits (besides, possibly, their beauty and self-reliance), and these are their ill-health and their extravagant devotion to dress.—Abba Goold Woolson.
Where is the man who has the power and skill
To stem the torrent of a woman's will?
For if she will, she will, you may depend on't,
And if she won't, she won't, and there's an end on't.
I have often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disasters which break down the spirit of a man and prostrate him in the dust seem to call forth all the energies of the softer sex, and give such intrepidity and elevation to their character, that at times it approaches to sublimity.—Washington Irving.
To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself will always be the text of the life of women.—Balzac.
All a woman has to do in this world is contained within the duties of a daughter, a sister, a wife and a mother.—Steele.
I have always said it—nature meant to make woman its master-piece.—Lessing.
The Christian religion alone contemplates the conjugal union in the order of nature; it is the only religion which presents woman to man as a companion; every other abandons her to him as a slave. To religion alone do European women owe their liberty.—St. Pierre.
Nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature,—compassion and enthusiasm. By compassion, they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves.—Lamartine.