Nellie Bly Quotes

“A free American girl can accommodate herself to circumstances without the aid of a man.”

“Accept praise for its worth — politeness. Be brutally frank with yourself. It's safer.”

“Another thing quite as noticeable, I had more men try to get up a flirtation with me while I was a box-factory girl than I ever had before. The girls were nice in their manners and as polite as ones reared at home. They never forgot to thank one another for the slightest service, and there was quite a little air of “good form” in many of their actions. I have seen many worse girls in much higher positions than the white slaves of New York.”

“Energy rightly applied and directed will accomplish anything.”

“I always liked fog, it lends such a soft, beautifying light to things that otherwise in the broad glare of day would be rude and commonplace.”

“I have never written a word that did not come from my heart. I never shall.”

“I was too impatient to work at the usual duties assigned women on newspapers.”

“It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.”

“Never order food in excess of your body weight.”

“Nonsense! If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is, do you want to do it?”

“Sports do not build character. They reveal it.”

“That was the greatest night of my existence. For a few hours I stood face to face with 'self'!”

“The turned-down pages of my life were turned up, and the past was present.”

“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”

“While I live I hope.”

“I always have a comfortable feeling that nothing is impossible if one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction.”

“I need a vacation; why not take a trip around the world?”

“If I loved and married, I would say to my mate: 'Come, I know where Eden is,' and like Edwin Arnold, desert the land of my birth for Japan, the land of love–beauty–poetry–cleanliness.”

“If one is traveling simply for the sake of traveling and not for the purpose of impressing one's fellow passengers, the problem of baggage becomes a very simple one.”

“If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is, do you want to do it?”

“Let me rest rocked gently by the rolling sea, in a nest of velvety darkness, my only light the soft twinkling of the myriads of stars in the quiet sky above; my music, the round of the kissing waters, cooling the brain and easing the pulse; my companionship, dreaming my own dreams. Give me that and I have happiness in its perfection.”

“They can talk of the companionship of men, the splendor of the sun, the softness of moonlight, the beauty of music, but give me a willow chair on a quiet deck.”

“To sit on a quiet deck, to have a star-lit sky the only light above or about, to hear the water kissing the prow of the ship, is, to me, paradise.”

“Never having failed, I could not picture what failure meant.”

“A pretty young Hebrew woman spoke so little English I could not get her story except as told by the nurses. They said her name is Sarah Fishbaum, and that her husband put her in the asylum because she had a fondness for other men than himself.”

“A stick beats more ugliness into a person than it ever beats out.”

“As I passed a low pavilion, where a crowd of helpless lunatics were confined, I read a motto on the wall, 'While I live I hope'. The absurdity of it struck me forcibly. I would have liked to put above the gates that open to the asylum, 'He who enters here leaveth hope behind'.”

“From the moment, I entered the insane ward on the Island, I made no attempt to keep up the assumed role of insanity. I talked and acted just as I do in ordinary life. Yet strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted the crazier I was thought to be by all except one physician, whose kindness and gentle ways I shall not soon forget.”

“Here was a woman taken without her own consent from the free world to an asylum and there given no chance to prove her sanity. Confined most probably for life behind asylum bars, without even being told in her language the why and wherefore. Compare this with a criminal, who is given every chance to prove his innocence. Who would not rather be a murderer and take the chance for life than be declared insane, without hope of escape?”

“How can a doctor judge a woman's sanity by merely bidding her good morning and refusing to hear her pleas for release? Even the sick ones know it is useless to say anything, for the answer will be that it is their imagination.”