Catharine Beecher Quotes

Woman's great mission is to train immature, weak and ignorant creatures to obey the laws of God; the physical, the intellectual, the social and the moral.

If all females were not only well educated themselves but were prepared to communicate in an easy manner their stores of knowledge to others; if they not only knew how to regulate their own minds, tempers, and habits but how to effect improvements in those around them, the face of society would be speedily changed.

The great want of our race is perfect educators to train new-born minds, who are infallible teachers of what is right and true.

... it is the right and duty of every woman to employ the power of organization and agitation in order to gain those advantages which are given to the one sex and unjustly withheld from the other.

The principle of subordination is the great bond of union and harmony through the universe.

... the physical and domestic education of daughters should occupy the principal attention of mothers, in childhood: and the stimulation of the intellect should be very much reduced.

When institutions are endowed to train women for all departments connected with the family state, domestic labor, now so shunned and disgraced, will become honorable, will gain liberal compensation, and will enable every woman to secure an independence in employments suited to her sex. And when this is attained, there will be few or none who wish to enter the professions of men or take charge of civil government.

... a large portion of those who demand woman suffrage are persons who have not been trained to reason, and are chiefly guided by their generous sensibilities.

The ability to secure an independent livelihood and honorable employ suited to her education and capacities is the only true foundation of the social elevation of woman, even in the very highest classes of society. While she continues to be educated only to be somebody's wife, and is left without any aim in life till that somebody either in love, or in pity, or in selfish regard at last grants her the opportunity, she can never be truly independent.

In civil and political affairs, American women take no interest or concern, except so far as they sympathize with their family and personal friends; but in all cases, in which they do feel a concern, their opinions and feelings have a consideration, equal or even superior, to that of the other sex.

The care of a house, the conduct of a home, the management of children, the instruction and government of servants, are as deserving of scientific treatment and scientific professors and lectureships as are the care of farms, the management of manure and crops, and the raising and care of stock.

... pure and intelligent women can be deceived and misled by the baser sort, their very innocence and experience making them credulous and the helpless tools of the guilty and bold.

... the school should be an appendage of the family state, and modeled on its primary principle, which is, to train the ignorant and weak by self-sacrificing labor and love; and to bestow the most on the weakest, the most undeveloped, and the most sinful.

The woman movement is one which is uniting by co-operating influences, all the antagonisms that are warring on the family state. Spiritualism, free love, free divorce, the vicious indulgences consequent on unregulated civilization, the worldliness which tempts men and women to avoid large families, often by sinful methods, thus making the ignorant masses the chief supply of the future ruling majorities; and most powerful of all, the feeble constitution and poor health of women, causing them to dread maternity as--what it is fast becoming--an accumulation of mental and bodily tortures.

We are now going through a period of demolition. In morals, in social life, in politics, in medicine, and in religion there is a universal upturning of foundations. But the day of reconstruction seems to be looming, and now the grand question is: Are there any sure and universal principles that will evolve a harmonious system in which we shall all agree?

Eating highly seasoned food is unhealthful, because it stimulates too much, provokes the appetite too much, and often is indigestible.

Half of the receipts in our cookbooks are mere murder to such constitutions and stomachs as we grow here. ...in America, owing to our brighter skies and more fervid climate, we have developed an acute, nervous delicacy of temperament far more akin to that of France than of England.

... all education must be unsound which does not propose for itself some object; and the highest of all objects must be that of living a life in accordance with God's Will.

To open avenues to political place and power for all classes of women would cause these humble labors of the family and school to be still more undervalued and shunned.

I regard the effort to introduce women into colleges for young men as very undesirable, and for many reasons. That the two sexes should be united, both as teachers and pupils, in the same institution seems very desirable, but rarely in early life by a method that removes them from parental watch and care, and the protecting influences of a home.

When the precepts and example of Jesus Christ fully interpermeate society, to labor with the hands will be regarded not only as a duty but a privilege.

We now come to the grand law of the system in which we are placed, as it has been developed by the experience of our race, and that, in one word, is SACRIFICE!

As if reasoning were any kind of writing or talking which tends to convince people that some doctrine or measure is true and right.

Work of all kinds is got from poor women, at prices that will not keep soul and body together, and then the articles thus made aresold for prices that give monstrous prices to the capitalist, who thus grows rich on the hard labor of our sex.

As liberty and intelligence have increased the people have more and more revolted against the theological dogmas that contradict common sense and wound the tenderest sensibilities of the soul.

The tea-kettle is as much an English institution as aristocracy or the Prayer-Book.

The people of this nation are eminently a trafficking people; and the present standard of honesty, as to trade and debts, is very low, and every year seems sinking still lower.

... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.

The delicate and infirm go for sympathy, not to the well and buoyant, but to those who have suffered like themselves.

How many young hearts have revealed the fact that what they had been trained to imagine, the highest earthly felicity, was but the beginning of care, disappointment, and sorrow, and often led to the extremity of mental and physical suffering.

Coffee it is best to buy by the bag, as it improves by keeping. Let it hang in the bag, in a dry place, and it loses its rank smell and taste.

Unusual precocity in children, is usually the result of an unhealthy state of the brain; and, in such cases, medical men would now direct, that the wonderful child should be deprived of all books and study, and turned to play or work in the fresh air.

It is thought that potato water is unhealthy; and therefore do not boil potatoes in soup, but boil elsewhere, and add them when nearly cooked.

... any men who would give up the law-making power to women in order to remedy existing evils, would surely be those most ready to enact the needful laws themselves.

Good manners are the expressions of benevolence in personal intercourse, by which we endeavor to promote the comfort and enjoyment of others, and to avoid all that gives needless uneasiness.

... so large a portion of those who hold much capital, instead of using their various advantages for the greatest good of those around them, employ the chief of them for mere selfish indulgences; thus inflicting as much mischief on themselves, as results to others from their culpable neglect. A great portion of the rich seem to be acting on the principle, that the more God bestows on them, the less are they under obligation to practise any self-denial, in fulfilling his benevolent plan of raising our race to intelligence and holiness.