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Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

  • ... for love, or repentance, or amendment, there are no such words as 'too late.'

  • ... never was there a thoroughly noble nature without some romance in it.

  • ... absence ... smothers into decay a rootless fancy but often nourishes the least seed of a true affection into full-flowering love.

  • Every man for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost.

  • Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.

  • God rest ye, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, / For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas-day.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Christmas Carol," Poems ()
  • Love that giveth in full store, / Aye receives as much, and more.

  • ... there are no judgments so harsh as those of the erring, the inexperienced, and the young.

  • Many true words are spoken in jest.

  • We never discover the value of things till we have lost them.

  • 'Little lady!' That is just such a name as one would give to an idle, useless, butterfly creature, of no value but as an amusement, a plaything of leisure hours, in time of business or care to be altogether set aside and forgotten.

  • But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

  • We are all of us very perfect creatures so long as we are not tried.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "John Bowerbank's Wife," Two Marriages ()
  • Any thing worth doing at all is worth doing well.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "John Bowerbank's Wife," Two Marriages ()
  • ... love with him was a plant of very slow growth ...

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Parson Garland's Daughter," Two Marriages ()
  • Love never stands still; it must inevitably be either growing or decaying — especially the love of marriage.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Parson Garland's Daughter," Two Marriages ()
  • ... what a fatal thing in pictures, books, or human lives, is a lack of proportion.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "On Living in Perspective," The Unkind Word ()
  • ... we are so scornful when we are young!

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "To Parents," The Unkind Word ()
  • If I had to write a book, I could not find anything in the world worth saying — as is indeed the case with many voluminous authors.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "A Garden Party," The Unkind Word ()
  • Altogether his conscience pricked him a good deal; and when people's consciences prick them, sometimes they get angry with other people, which is very silly, and only makes matters worse.

  • ... it does not do to tell great people anything unpleasant.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • title story, The Little Lame Prince ()
  • Now, I have nothing to say against uncles in general. They are usually very excellent people, and very convenient to little boys and girls.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • title story, The Little Lame Prince ()
  • The plan of this world is infinite similarity and yet infinite variety.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • title story, The Little Lame Prince ()
  • A parent, unlike a poet, is not born — he is made.

  • We expect too much from our children. We exact from them a perfection which we are far from carrying out in ourselves; we require of them sacrifices much heavier, comparatively, than those of any grown-up person.

  • Those whose own light is quenched are often the light-bringers.

  • The wonder is not that some married people are less happy than they hoped to be, but that any married people, out of the honeymoon, or even in it, are ever happy at all.

  • A perfect marriage is as rare as a perfect love. Could it be otherwise, when both men and women are so imperfect? Could aught else be expected? Yet all do expect it.

  • ... according to the old joke, married people are often like little boys bathing, who cry with chattering teeth to the boys on the shore, 'Do come in, it's so warm' — it is not always warm.

  • The vessel has gone down, but there may be a little boat somewhere; our sail may be torn to ribbons, but we have oars still; if we can not row, perhaps we can swim. Somehow or other we may touch land.

  • ... there is nothing so absolute as the tyranny of weakness.

  • ... it is not work that kills, but 'worry' ...

  • O my son's my son till he gets him a wife, / But my daughter's my daughter all her life.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Magnus and Morna," Mulock's Poems, New and Old ()
  • Autumn to winter, winter into spring, / Spring into summer, summer into fall — / So rolls the changing year, and so we change; / Motion so swift, we know not that we move ...

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Immutable," Mulock's Poems, New and Old ()
  • ... this world / Is full of change, change, change, — nothing but change. / Is there not one straw in life's whirling flood / To hold by, as the torrent sweeps us down ...

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Immutable," Mulock's Poems, New and Old ()
  • O the green things growing, the green things growing, / The faint sweet smell of the green things growing!

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Green Things Growing," Mulock's Poems, New and Old ()
  • And when I lie in the green kirkyard, / With the mold upon my breast, / Say not that 'She did well — or ill,' / Only, 'She did her best!'

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Headings of Chapters," Mulock's Poems, New and Old ()
  • No rest — no dark. / Hour after hour that passionless bright face / Climbs up the desolate blue.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Moon-Struck," Mulock's Poems, New and Old ()
  • ... it often doth befall, / He who conquers loses all.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Headings of Chapters," Mulock's Poems, New and Old ()
  • There never was night that had no morn.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "The Golden Gate," Mulock's Poems, New and Old ()
  • ... silence sweeter is than speech.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Magnus and Morna," Mulock's Poems, New and Old ()
  • The secret of life is not to do what one likes, but to try to like what one has to do.

  • ... our right or wrong use of money is the utmost test of character, as well as the root of happiness or misery, throughout our whole lives.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • title essay, About Money and Other Things ()
  • When the ship is going down we trouble ourselves little enough about the style of the cabin furniture.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • title essay, About Money and Other Things ()
  • I can imagine nothing more pitiable than the waking-up of an honest, true-hearted young fellow, who finds his angel a commonplace, silly, helpless woman, whom he can neither trust nor control, yet is obliged to make the nominal mistress of his household, secretly taking all its burdens on himself in addition to his own. Not perhaps that she is a bad woman, but simply an ignorant and thoughtless one, of the tribe of 'careless virgins,' who, as wives, are the destruction of men. And one of the worst of women, not being actually criminal, is she who has no sense of the value and use of money, which when she gets it 'burns a hole in her pocket'; who never keeps accounts, having 'no head for figures,' or finding it 'too much trouble.' Consequently, even with the best intentions, she wastes as much as she spends, consoling herself on the easy principle that it doesn't matter; 'Mr. So-and-So pays for everything.'

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • title essay, About Money and Other Things ()
  • A person who is careless about money is careless about everything, and untrustworthy in everything.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • title essay, About Money and Other Things ()
  • Money is meant not for hoarding, but for using; the aim of life should be to use it in the right way — to spend as much as we can lawfully spend, both upon ourselves and others. And sometimes it is better to do this in our lifetime, when we can see that it is well spent, than to leave it to the chance spending of those that come after us.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • title essay, About Money and Other Things ()
  • ... the worst times come to an end if you can only wait long enough.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Six Happy Days in a Houseboat," About Money and Other Things ()
  • Why cannot one always do, not only the right thing, but at the right time?

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Six Happy Days in a Houseboat," About Money and Other Things ()
  • ... in speculating on the life to come I think the secret cry of all of us would be, 'Let me remain myself — able to meet and recognize those I love as themselves, else — in plain truth — I would not care for any after-life at all.'

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Life and Its Worth, a Lay Sermon," About Money and Other Things ()
  • ... genius is original, unique; and in whatever form it may develop itself is the greatest gift that can be given to man, the strongest known link between the material life we have and the spiritual life that we can only guess at. Every great poet, painter, or musician — every inventor or man of science, every fine actor or orator, comes to us as the exponent of something diviner than we know. We cannot understand it, but we feel it, and acknowledge it.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Genius," About Money and Other Things ()
  • He was, so to speak, the most excellent of tyrants; his sway was absolute, but he used it well. ... both wife and children were affectionately inclined toward him — for some people are happiest in being thus ruled; it takes away so much moral responsibility.

  • ... they lived a comfortable humdrum life, conscious of no higher existence. Doubtless they were quite happy — and so are oysters!

  • God makes many poets, but he only gives utterance to a few.

  • An author departs; he does not die.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
  • ... language was with him neither a science, an art, nor an acccomplishment, but a mere vehicle for thought — the garb, always chosen as simplest and fittest, in which his ideas were clothed. His conversation was never wearisome, since he only spoke when he had something to say; and having said it, in the most concise and appropriate manner that suggested itself at the time, he was silent ...

  • Better no marriage, than a marriage short of the best.

  • Immortality alone could teach this mortal how to die.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Looking Death in the Face," Miss Mulock's Poems ()
  • Down in the deep, up in the sky, / I see them always, far or nigh, / And I shall see them till I die — The old familiar faces.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "Magnus and Morna," Thirty Years, Poems New and Old ()
  • The buttercups across the field / Made sunshine rifts of splendor.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,
    • "A Silly Song," Mulock's Poems: New and Old ()
  • When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action.

    • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, English writer, poet

(1826 - 1887)