Quotes by Frances E. Willard

“Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from the things that are foul.”

“This seems to be the law of progress in everything we do; it moves along a spiral rather than a perpendicular; we seem to be actually going out of the way, and yet it turns out that we were really moving upward all the time.”

“The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.”

The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.

The opacity of the mind, its inability to project itself into the realm of anothers personality, goes a long way to explain the friction of life. If we would set down other peoples errors to this rather than to malice prepense we should not only get more good out of life and feel more kindly toward our fellows, but doubtless the rectitude of our intellects would increase, and the justice of our judgments...we are so shut away from one another that none tells those about him what he considers ideal treatment on their part toward him...nothing will probe to the core of this greatest disadvantage under which we labor--that is, mutual noncomprehension--except a basis of society and government which would make it easy for each to put himself in anothers place because his place is so much like anothers...we [would] need less imagination in order to do that which is just and kind to every one about us.

If women patronize the wheel the number of buyers will be twice as large. If women ride they must, when riding, dress more rationally than they have been wont to do. If they do this many prejudices as to what they may be allowed to wear will melt away. Reason will gain upon precedent and ere long the comfortable, sensible, and artistic wardrobe of the rider will make the conventional style of womans dress absurd to the eye and unenduring to the understanding. A reform often advances most rapidly by indirection. An ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory; and the graceful and becoming costume of woman on the bicycle will convince the world that has brushed aside the theories, no matter how well constructed, and the arguments, no matter how logical, of dress-reformers.

That which caused the many failures I had in learning the bicycle had caused me failures in life; namely, a certain fearful looking for of judgment; a too vivid realization of the uncertainty of everything about me; an underlying doubt--at once, however (and this is all that saved me), matched and overcome by the determination not to give in to it.

In externals we advance with lightening express speed, in modes of thought and sympathy we lumber on in stage-coach fashion.