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Sarah Bernhardt
Dates: October 22, 1845 - March 26, 1923

Sarah Bernhardt, whose name is virtually synonymous with "stage actress," was a French actress known as "The Divine Sarah." Sarah Bernhardt was very popular in her native France and around Europe, and her numerous tours of the United States brought her fame and popularity in America as well.

Selected Sarah Bernhardt Quotations

� Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

� Celebrity .... is a sort of octopus with innumerable tentacles. It throws out to right and left, in front and behind, its clammy arms, and gathers in, through its thousand little suckers, all the gossip and slander and praise afloat, to spit out again at the public.

� Mark Twain about Sarah Bernhardt: There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses -- and then there is Sarah Bernhardt.

Annie Besant Quotes

Women's Voices: Quotations by Women

Not out of right practice comes right thinking, but out of right thinking comes right practice. It matters enormously what you think. If you think falsely, you will act mistakenly; if you think basely, your conduct will suit your thinking.

... those who can serve best, those who help most, those who sacrifice most, those are the people who will be loved in life and honoured in death, when all questions of colour are swept away and when in a free country free citizens shall meet on equal grounds.

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)

Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator who founded Bethune-Cookman College and served as its president. Mary McLeod Bethune served in several capacities during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, including head of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration and advisor on selecting officer candidates for the Women's Army Corps. Mary McLeod Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935.

Selected Mary McLeod Bethune Quotations


� We live in a world which respects power above all things.

� The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood.

� Whatever the white man has done, we have done, and often better.

� You white folks have long been eating the white meat of the chicken. We Negroes are now ready for some of the white meat instead of the dark meat.

� If we have the courage and tenacity of our forebears, who stood firmly like a rock against the lash of slavery, we shall find a way to do for our day what they did for theirs.

� The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.

� From the first, I made my learning, what little it was, useful every way I could.

Alice Stone Blackwell Quotes

The brain is not, and cannot be, the sole or complete organ of thought and feeling.

Justice is better than chivalry if we cannot have both.

A woman finds the natural lay of the land almost unconsciously; and not feeling it incumbent on her to be guide and philosopher to any successor, she takes little pains to mark the route by which she is making her ascent.

Antoinette Brown Blackwell Quotes

If woman's sole responsibility is of the domestic type, one class will be crushed by it, and the other throw it off as a badge of poverty. The poor man's motto, "Women's work is never done," leads inevitably to its antithesis -- ladies' work is never begun.

... you asked me one day if it seemed like giving up much for your sake. Only leave me free, as free as you are and everyone ought to be, and it is giving up nothing.

Elizabeth Blackwell Quotes

Elizabeth Blackwell, born in Britain, was the first woman in the United States to earn a medical degree. She founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children and trained nurses in the American Civil War.

Selected Elizabeth Blackwell Quotations

� If society will not admit of woman's free development, then society must be remodeled.

� It is not easy to be a pioneer -- but oh, it is fascinating! I would not trade one moment, even the worst moment, for all the riches in the world.

� Our school education ignores, in a thousand ways, the rules of healthy development.

Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818 - 1894)

Amelia Bloomer (born Amelia Jenks) was a temperance reformer who became interested in women's rights, and started the publication the Lily. In the Lily, she advocated for dress reform, and wore one of the new costumes herself: a bodice, short skirt, and trousers. Her name became associated with the Bloomer costume.

Selected Amelia Jenks Bloomer Quotations

� When you find a burden in belief or apparel, cast it off.

� The costume of women should be suited to her wants and necessities. It should conduce at once to her health, comfort, and usefulness; and, while it should not fail also to conduce to her personal adornment, it should make that end of secondary importance.

� It will not do to say that it is out of woman's sphere to assist in making laws, for if that were so, then it should be also out of her sphere to submit to them.

� Although the doctrine of innate equality of the race has been proclaimed, yet so far as woman is concerned it has been a standing falsehood.

Boadaceia Quote

If you weigh well the strengths of our armies you will see that in this battle we must conquer or die. This is a woman's resolve. As for the men, they may live or be slaves.

Erma Bombeck Quotes

Erma Bombeck (1927-1996)

Columnist Erma Bombeck was known for her quick wit and her wisdom about motherhood and family life. Here are a few selected quotations from Erma Bombeck:


� People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow.

� The Rose Bowl is the only bowl I've ever seen that I didn't have to clean.

� Spend at least one Mother's Day with your prospective mothers in law before you decide on marriage. If a man gives his mother a gift certificate for a flu shot, dump him.

� Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving.

� Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop offs at tedium and counter productivity.

� My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch on fire or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one cares. Why should you?

� Education is so important when it comes to domesticity. I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.

� Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

� I just clipped 2 articles from a current magazine. One is a diet guaranteed to drop 5 pounds off my body in a weekend. The other is a recipe for a 6 minute pecan pie.

� Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.

Anne Bradstreet (~1612-1672)

Anne Bradstreet was the first published poet in America. Her father and husband each served as governor of Massachusetts colony. She had eight children, and many famous Americans were her descendents, including William Ellery Channing, Wendell Phillips, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Selected Anne Bradstreet Quotations

� If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

� Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are.

� Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending.