“Indeed, most of our knowledge comes to us second-hand, through the medium of men with their cut-and-dried theories as to what women are or ought to be.”

Challenging inherited theories about women shaped largely by male observers · Introduction to The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff (1890)

• Freedom
• Truth

“For poets have unfortunately always been more successful in depicting scenes of passion, crime, and agony than in their descriptions of divine love and beatitude.”

Noting the enduring artistic power of suffering, conflict and tragedy · Lecture, Shelley's View of Nature Contrasted with Darwin's (1886)

• Art
• Despair
• Poetry

“In fact, the one is a theory of life, the other a disease of the soul.”

Distinguishing a lived philosophy from a state of spiritual collapse · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

• Despair
• Truth