Dinah Maria Murlock Craik Quotes

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

I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water. We can feel it interpenetrating our whole being with warmth and strength; we can see it in a pale reflection shining elsewhere; or in its total absence, we, walking in darkness, learn to appreciate what it is by what it is not.

Do your neighbour good by all means in your power, moral as well as physical by kindness, by patience, by unflinching resistance against every outward evil by the silent preaching of your own contrary life. But if the only good you can do him is by talking at him, or about him nay, even to him, if it be in a self-satisfied, super-virtuous style such as I earnestly hope the present writer is not doing you had much better leave him alone.

O the green things growing, the green things growing,
The faint sweet smell of the green things growing!
I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve,
Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing.

God rest ye, little children; let nothing you afright,
For Jesus Christ, your Saviour, was born this happy night;
Along the hills of Galilee the white blocks sleeping lay,
When Christ, the child of Nazareth, was born on Christmas day.

The world! It is a word capable of as diverse interpretations or misinterpretations as the thing itself a thing by various people supposed to belong to heaven, man, or the devil, or alternatively to all three.

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.

A lost love. Deny it who will, ridicule it, treat it as mere imagination and sentiment, the thing is and will be; and women do suffer therefrom, in all its infinite varieties: loss by death, by faithlessness or unworthiness, and by mistaken or unrequited affection.

The plan of this world is infinite similarity and yet infinite variety.

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.

O, the mulberry-tree is of trees the queen! Bare long after the rest are green; But as time steals onwards, while none perceives Slowly she clothes herself with leaves.

The present only is a man's possession; the past is gone out of his hand wholly, irrevocably. He may suffer from it, learn from it,
in degree, perhaps, expiate it; but to brood over it is utter madness.

No virtue ever was founded on a lie. The truth, then, at all risks and costs the truth from the beginning. Make a clean breast to whomsoever you need to make it, and then face the world.

Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence.

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

Sweet April-time-O cruel April-time! Year after year returning, with a brow Of promise, and red lips with longing paled, And backward-hidden hands that clutch the joys Of vanished springs, like flowers.

The man who does his work, any work, conscientiously, must always be in one sense a great man.

We never know through what Divine mysteries of compensation the great Father of the universe may be carrying out His sublime plan; but those three words, "God is love " ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things.

For truly, the greatest of all external blessings is it to be able to lean your heart against another heart, faithful, tender, true, and tried, and record with a thankfulness that years deepen instead of diminishing, "I have got a friend!"

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.

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

Alack, this world
Is full of change, change, change
nothing but change!

Happiness! Can any human being undertake to define it for another?

God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
Was born upon this day,
To save us all from Satan's power
When we were gone astray.
O tidings of comfort and joy!
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
Was born on Christmas Day.

Society, in the aggregate, is no fool. It is astonishing what an amount of "eccentricity" it will stand from anybody who takes the bull by the horns, too fearless or too indifferent to think of consequences.

To have loved and lost, either by that total disenchantment which leaves compassion as the sole substitute for love which can exist no more, or by the slow torment which is obliged to let go day by day all that constitutes the diviner part of love namely, reverence, belief, and trust, yet clings desperately to the only thing left it, a long-suffering apologetic tenderness this lot is probably the hardest any woman can have to bear.

Unless a woman has a decided pleasure and facility in teaching, an honest knowledge of everything she professes to impart, a liking for children, and, above all, a strong moral sense of her responsibility towards them, for her to attempt to enroll herself in the scholastic order is absolute profanation.

We are so scornful when we are young!

What a fatal thing in pictures, books, or human lives, is a lack of proportion.

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.

There is nothing so absolute as the tyranny of weakness.

The life of action is nobler than the life of thought.

When the ship is going down we trouble ourselves little enough about the style of the cabin furniture.

About the greatest virtue a friend can have, is to be able to hold her tongue; and through this, like all virtues carried to extremity, may grow into a fault, and do great harm, still, it never can do so much harm as that horrible laxity and profligacy of speech which is a the root of half the quarrels, cruelties, and injustices of the world.

We have not to construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we find it, and make the best of it.

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

Now, I have nothing to say against uncles in general. They are usually very excellent people, and very convenient to little boys and girls.

Autumn
Into earth's lap does throw
Brown apples gay in a game of play,
As the equinoctials blow.

Nothing but a speck we seem In the waste of waters round, Floating, floating like a dream, Outward bound.

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

There was never a night that had no morn.

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.

There is no sorrow under heaven which is, or ought to be, endless. To believe or to make it so, is an insult to Heaven itself.

Wedlock's a lane where there is no turning.

To accept the inevitable; neither to struggle against it nor murmur at it-this is the great lesson of life.

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.

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

Gossip, public, private, social to fight against it either by word or pen seems, after all, like fighting with shadows. Everybody laughs at it, protests against it, blames and despises it; yet everybody does it, or at least encourages others in it: quite innocently, unconsciously, in such a small, harmless fashion yet we do it. We must talk about something, and it is not all of us who can find a rational topic of conversation, or discuss it when found.

Action is the parent of results; dormancy, the brooding mother of discontent.

Though it is folly to suppose that happiness is a matter of volition, and that we can make ourselves content and cheerful whenever we choose a theory that many poor hypochondriacs are taunted with till they are nigh driven mad yet, on the other hand, no sane mind is ever left without the power of self-discipline and self-control in a measure, which measure increases in proportion as it is exercised.

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.

It may often be noticed, the less virtuous people are, the more they shrink away from the slightest whiff of the odour of un-sanctity. The good are ever the most charitable, the pure are the most brave.

Be loving, and you will never want for love; be humble, and you will never want for guiding.

Queens you must always be: queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and your sons, queens of higher mystery to the world beyond ... But alas, you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest.

One only "right" we have to assert in common with mankind
and that is as much in our hands as theirs
is the right of having something to do.

A secret at home is like rocks under tide.

What comfort there is in a cheerful spirit! how the heart leaps up to meet a sunshiny face, a merry tongue, an even temper, and a heart which either naturally, or, what is better, from conscientious principle, has learned to take all things on their bright side, believing that the Giver of life being all-perfect Love, the best offering we can make to Him is to enjoy to the full what He sends of good, and bear what He allows of evil!

As we sail through life towards death,
Bound unto the same port
heaven,
Friend, what years could us divide?