“Women can do nothing that has permanence.”

Letter to Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Autumn 1872)

Source: Note to Self (2017), Chapter 28, "To my dearest future", p.301

The Infinite Potential of Women (2008)

Source: See You at the Top (2000), p. 164
Context: You might occasionally feel that some people are standing in the way and slowing your progress, but in reality the biggest person standing in your way is you. Others can stop you temporarily — you are the only one who can do it permanently.

"Self-Poise" p. 130.
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
Context: The better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth that will receive nothing it is not sure it can permanently lay to heart. Of our study there should be in proportion two-thirds of rejection to one of acceptance. And, amid the manifold infatuations and illusions of this world of emotion, a being capable of clear intelligence can do no better service than to hold himself upright, avoid nonsense, and do what chores lie in his way, acknowledging every moment that primal truth, which no fact exhibits, nor, if pressed by too warm a hope, will even indicate. I think, indeed, it is part of our lesson to give a formal consent to what is farcical, and to pick up our living and our virtue amid what is so ridiculous, hardly deigning a smile, and certainly not vexed. The work is done through all, if not by every one.

Source: Gift from the Sea (1955), Ch. 2