There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

English girls' schools today providing the higher education are so far as my knowledge goes worthily representative of that astonishing rise in the intellectual standards of women which has taken place in the last half-century.

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.

Here is the rule to remember in the future When anything tempts you to be bitter: not 'This is a misfortune' but 'To bear this worthily is good fortune.'