Books are always good company if you have the right sort.
Cheerfulness can change misfortune into love and friends.
Everybody has their days of misfortune.
I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all.
Souls and bodies should go on together.
Youth, health and freedom were meant to be enjoyed and I want to try every pleasure before I am too old to enjoy them.
Salt is like good-humor, and nearly every thing is better for a pinch of it.
Have your fun, my dear; but if you must earn your bread, try to make it sweet with cheerfulness, not bitter with the daily regret that it isn’t cake.
The duty we owe ourselves is greater than that we owe others.
Now we are expected to be as wise as men who have had generations of all the help there is, and we scarcely anything.
Now I’m beginning to live a little and feel less like a sick oyster at low tide.
I put in my list all the busy, useful independent spinsters I know, for liberty is a better husband than love to many of us.
Energy is more attractive than beauty in a man.
I was thinking what a curious thing love is; only a sentiment, and yet it has power to make fools of men and slaves of women.
No love or pity, pardon or excuse should soften the sharp pang of reparation for the guilty man.
Sympathy is a sweet thing.
The female population exceeds the male, you know, especially in New England, which accounts for the high state of culture we are in, perhaps.
At twenty-five, girls begin to talk about being old maids, but secretly resolve that they never will. At thirty, they say nothing about it, but quietly accept the fact.
Power is a dangerous thing. Be careful that you don’t abuse it or let it make a tyrant of you.
I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy.