Deborah Sampson Quotes

#1. What shall I say further? Shall I not stop short and leave to your imaginations to portray the tragic deeds of war? Is it not enough that I here leave it even to unexperience to fancy the hardships, the anxieties, the dangers, even of the best life of a soldier?

Deborah Sampson

#2. I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe.

Deborah Sampson

#3. On the whole, as we readily acquiesce in the acknowledgment that the field and the cabinet are the proper spheres assigned to our Masters and our Lords, may we also deserve the dignified title and encomium of Mistress and Lady in our kitchens and in our parlours.

Deborah Sampson

#4. Such is my experience - not that I ever mourned the loss of a child, but that I consider myself as lost!

Deborah Sampson

#5. I take it to be from the greatest extremes, both in virtue and in vice, that the uniformly virtuous and reformed in life can derive the greatest and most salutary truths and impressions.

Deborah Sampson

#6. I am indeed willing to acknowledge what I have done, an error and presumption. I will call it an error and presumption because I swerved from the accustomed flowery paths of female delicacy.

Deborah Sampson

#7. I became an actor in that important drama with an inflexible resolution to persevere through the last scene, when we might be permitted and acknowledged to enjoy what we had so nobly declared we would possess, or lose with our lives - Freedom and Independence!

Deborah Sampson

#8. In whatever I may be thought to have been unnatural, unwise and indelicate, it is now my most fervent desire it may have a suitable impression on you - and on me, a penitent for every wrong thought and step.

Deborah Sampson

#9. November 11, 1802, I arrived at Judge Patterson's at Lisle. This respectable family treated me with every mark of distinction and friendship, and likewise all the people did the same. I really want for words to express my gratitude.

Deborah Sampson

#10. As I was born to be unfortunate, my sun soon clouded.

Deborah Sampson

#11. Wrought upon at length, you may say, by an enthusiasm and frenzy that could brook no control - I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe, and clandestinely, or by stealth, grasped an opportunity, which custom and the world seemed to deny, as a natural privilege.

Deborah Sampson

#12. Why can I not fight for my country too?

Deborah Sampson

#13. As an overruling providence may succeed our wishes, let us rear an offspring in every respect worthy to fill the most illustrious stations of their predecessors.

Deborah Sampson