“I wish that I could know your inner life to have your contrasted experiences.”

Seeking intimacy through the exchange of private experience · Letter to Margaret Sweat, November 1851

• Friendship
• Intimacy
• Knowledge

“With me, if you start in a friendship, you will have to begin and go on—with entire, perhaps disagreeable truth, candor, sincerity. There is not one particle of ‘nonsense’ about me. I cannot stand blarney, roundaboutedness.”

Insisting on uncompromising honesty as the foundation of true friendship · Letter to Elizabeth Akers Allen, December 1873

• Friendship
• Honesty
• Sincerity

“Intellect has no sex.”

Asserting the gender-neutrality of intellectual capacity against patronising praise · Column as Lady Correspondent, Daily Alta California, 30 March 1856

• Equality
• Gender
• Intelligence