Lydia Maria Child (1802 – 1880)
American abolitionist, women's rights activist, opponent of American expansionism, Indian rights activist, novelist, and journalist.
It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world.
Pillars are fallen at thy feet,
Fanes quiver in the air,
A prostrate city is thy seat,
And thou alone art there.
That a majority of women do not wish for any important change in their social and civil condition, merely proves that they are the unreflecting slaves of custom.
All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure.