“Old beggar women (and men) come around you and plead, with eighty or more winters in their wrinkles. I for one cannot refuse.”

Expressing compassion for the elderly poor she encountered in Rome · Letter concerning her Roman studio work, 1868

• Compassion
• Humanity
• Poverty

“The vast difference between working here and at home is at once manifest in the abundance with which the necessities of study present themselves to you without any wearisome search.”

Describing how Rome transformed her experience of artistic study by making opportunities for learning constantly available · Letter to her family, November 18, 1867

• Art
• Learning
• Study

“Do you think I am in danger of floundering into moral mush? I don't.”

A characteristically playful assertion that tolerance need not mean abandoning moral convictions · Letter to Maria Weston Chapman, December 25, 1883

• Humour
• Morality
• Principles