This specter of the female ...

This specter of the female politician, who abandons her family to neglect for the sake of passing bills in parliament, is just as complete an illusion of the masculine brain, as the other specter whom Sydney Smith laid by a joke,--the woman who would forsake an infant for a quadratic equation.
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 Frances Power Cobbe

Quotes from the same author

So immense are the claims on a mother, physical claims on her bodily and brain vigor, and moral claims on her heart and thoughts, that she cannot ... meet them all and find any large margin beyond for other cares and work. She serves the community in the very best and highest way it is possible to do, by giving birth to healthy children, whose physical strength has not been defrauded, and to whose moral and mental nature she can give the whole of her thoughts.
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 Frances Power Cobbe
Every woman who has any margin of time or money to spare should adopt some one public interest, some philanthropic undertaking,or some social agitation of reform, and give to that cause whatever time and work she may be able to afford.
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 Frances Power Cobbe
I think it is worse to be poor in mind than in purse, to be stunted and belittled in soul, made a coward, made a liar, made mean and slavish, accustomed to fawn and prevaricate, and "manage" by base arts a husband or a father,--I think this is worse than to be kicked with hobnailed shoes.
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 Frances Power Cobbe
If a woman be herself pure and noble-hearted, she will come into every circle as a person does into a heated room, who carries with him the freshness of the woods where he has been walking.
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 Frances Power Cobbe
I could discern clearly, even at that early age, the essential difference between people who are kind to dogs and people who really love them.
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 Frances Power Cobbe