The following quote was written during the Victorian era to young women of wealth and privilege. That being said, it has many useful applications for today's girls, and boys. Here is the abridged quote followed by the original. 

"You may see continually girls who have never been taught to do a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who cannot keep household accounts, nor prepare a medicine, whose whole life has been passed either in play or in pride: you will find girls like these, when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion of religious spirit, which was meant by God to support them through there daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation over the meaning of the Bible, of which no syllable was ever yet to be understood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure consciences warped into fruitless agony concerning questions which the laws of common serviceable life would have either solved for them in an instant, or kept out of their way. Give such a girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and benevolent peace."

Original - 

"You may see continually girls who have never been taught to do a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who cannot keep household accounts, nor prepare a medicine, whose whole life has been passed either in play or in pride: you will find girls like these, when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion of religious spirit, which was meant by God to support them through there daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation over the meaning of the Bible, of which no syllable was ever yet to be understood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure consciences warped into fruitless agony concerning questions which the laws of common serviceable life would have either solved for them in an instant, or kept out of their way. 

Give such a girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace."