Give us that grand word 'woman' once again, and let's have done with 'lady'; one's a term full of fine force, strong, beautiful, and firm, fit for the noblest use of tongue or pen; and one's a word for lackeys.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the strength and nobility associated with the term 'woman' compared to the more submissive connotation of 'lady'.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox's quote presents a powerful distinction between the words 'woman' and 'lady', arguing that the former embodies strength, beauty, and nobility while the latter connotes a sense of subservience. This reflection challenges societal norms that often relegate women to submissive roles and calls for a recognition of their true power and potential, encouraging a more assertive identity that women can embrace.
In practice
In a speech on gender equality, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of language in empowering women.
Sweep up the debris of decaying faith; _x000D_ Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out out beliefs, _x000D_ And throw your soul wide open to the light of reason and of knowledge. _x000D_ Be not afraid _x000D_ To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole.
I am the voice of the voiceless; Through me the dumb shall speak. Till the deaf world's ears be made to hear. The wrongs of the wordless weak. And I am my brothers keeper, And I will fight his fights; And speak the words for beast and bird. Till the world shall set things right.
A weed is but an unloved flower.
So many gods, so many creeds, so many paths that wind and wind while just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs.
'Tis easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows along like a song; But the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong.
Do you wish the world were happy? Then remember day by day, just to scatter seeds of kindness as you pass along the way. . . .
Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.
Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.
Charity is to be measured, not by what one has given away, but by what one has left.
It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.
Implosion is no invention in the conventional sense, but rather the renaissance of ancient knowledge, lost over the course of time.
If the history of resistance to Darwinian thinking is a good measure, we can expect that long into the future, long after every triumph of human thought has been matched or surpassed by 'mere machines,' there will still be thinkers who insist that the human mind works in mysterious ways that no science can comprehend.
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