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Jane Welsh Carlyle
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“People who are so dreadfully 'devoted' to their wives are so apt, from mere habit, to get devoted to other people's wives as well!”
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“Instead of boiling up individuals into the species I would draw a chalk circle round every individuality and preach to it to keep within that, and preserve and cultivate its identity ...”
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“Oh, my dear! never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement. I will not try it. Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.”
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“... all griefs, when there is no bitterness in them, are soothed down by time.”
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“When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favor.”
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“To-day it has blown knives and files; a cold, rasping, savage day ...”
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“... not a hundredth part of the thoughts in my head have ever been or ever will be spoken or written — as long as I keep my senses, at least.”
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“... the longer one lives in this hard world motherless, the more a mother's loss makes itself felt ...”
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“... youth is so insatiable of happiness, and has such sublimely insane faith in its own power to make happy and be happy!”
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“The longer I live, the more I am certified that men, in all that relates to their own health, have not common sense! whether it be their pride, or their impatience, or their obstinancy, or their ingrained spirit of contradiction, that stupefies and misleads them, the result is always a certain amount of idiocy, or distraction in their dealings with their own bodies! ... either by their wild impatience of bodily suffering, and the exaggerated moan they make over it, or else by their reckless defiance of it, and neglect of every dictate of prudence!”
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“... the less one does, as I long ago observed, the less one can find time to do.”
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“The only thing which makes one place more attractive to me than another is the quantity of heart in it ...”
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“... I can see that the Lady has a genius for ruling, whilst I have a genius for — not being ruled!”
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“... there is everything here needed for happiness, but just one thing — the faculty of being happy! And that unfortunately, I had never much of in my best days; and in the days that are, it is lost to me altogether!”
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“... I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for ...”
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“... the surest way to get a thing in this life is to be prepared for doing without it, - to the exclusion even of hope.”
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“... cracked things often hold out as long as whole things; one takes so much better care of them!”
Jane Welsh Carlyle, Scottish poet, letterwriter
(1801 - 1866)
Full name: Jane Baillie Welsh Carlyle.