- You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience
in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing
which you think you cannot do.
- No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
- I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and
then live with that decision.
- I could not, at any age, be content to take my place
by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiousity
must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back
on life.
- Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for
you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do and damned if
you don't.
- It was not until I reached middle years that I had the
courage to develop interests of my own, outside of my duties to my family.
In the beginning, it seems to me now, I had no goal beyond the interests
themselves, in learning about people and conditions and the world outside
our own United States. Almost at once I began to discover that interest
leads to interest, knowledge leads to more knowledge, the capacity for
understanding grows with the effort to understand.
- I never thought of achievement. I just did what came
along for me to do—the thing that gave me the most pleasure.
- Is it possible for a woman to marry and still have a
career? This question has been asked of me so many times that I am glad
at last to sit down and write some of the things which always come to
my mind. To begin with, the question is foolishly worded, for there
are very few women who have careers. Those with real careers are a little
group by themselves needing separate consideration. Most women marry
and work, and the work will not be a 'career.' The question put this
way also seems to imply that marriage in itself is not a career. Anyone
who believes that has no real understanding of marriage... The question
should really be phrased in this way: Are you able to carry on two full-time
jobs? Have you the physical strength and the mental vigor to do this
day in and day out-particularly when you are young, first married, adjusting
yourself to a stranger's personality, and perhaps bearing children,
which is an added physical strain?
- I believe we will have better government when men and
women discuss public issues together and make their decisions on the
basis of their differing areas of concern for the welfare of their families
and their world. Too often the great decisions are originated and given
form in bodies made up wholly of men or so completely dominated by them
that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside
without expression.
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