Solitude of Self

Excerpted from the speech "Solitude of Self" delivered by suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton before the Committee of the Judiciary of the United States Congress, Monday, January 18, 1892:

When death sunders our nearest ties, alone we sit in the shadows of our affliction. Alike mid the greatest triumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. On the devine heights of human attainments, eulogized land worshiped as a hero or saint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty, and vice, as a pauper or criminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs of our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded thro dark courts and alleys, in by-ways and highways; alone we stand in the judgment seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the awful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and most helpless are thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing then that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right.

You can read the speech in its entirety at WikiSource.org, HERE.

Although she was speaking specifically about women’s rights, it’s a nice essay on the importance of education and self-improvement.  

It’s worth your time.