Jane Welsh Carlyle Quotes

The triumphal-procession-air which, in our manners and customs, is given to marriage at the outset - that singing of Te Deum before the battle has begun.

There is never much to be feared for anyone that is born with sense and truth in him, whatever else he may have or want.

But what are friends? What is a husband, even, compared with one's Mother? Of her love, one is always so sure! It is the only love that nothing - not even misconduct on our part - can take away from us.

There is nothing like a good bit of pain for taking the conceit out of one.

It is much to be wished that one had a post that knew what it was doing again; and lawmakers that knew what they were doing. If I were the Government, I should feel rather ashamed of making regulations one month and unmaking them the next.

Either I am just what God intended me for, or God cannot 'carry out' His intentions, it would seem.

They call me 'sweet,' and 'gentle'; and some of the men go the length of calling me 'endearing,' and I laugh in my sleeve and think, 'Oh, Lord! If you but knew what a brimstone of a creature I am behind all this beautiful amiability!'

One feels as if it could never, never be less. And yet all griefs, when there is no bitterness in them, are soothed down by time.

I wonder that among all the evils deprecated in the Liturgy, no one thought of inserting flitting. Is there any worse thing? Oh no, no!

Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has 'cast up' in my time or is like to
this art by which even the 'poor' can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting favorably on the morality of the country?

It is sad and wrong to be so dependent for the life of my life on any human being as I am on you; but I cannot by any force of logic cure myself at this date, when it has become second nature.

I do think there is much truth in the Young German idea that marriage is a shockingly immoral institution, as well as what we have long known it for - an extremely disagreeable one.

Youth is so insatiable of happiness, and has such sublimely insane faith in its own power to make happy and be happy!

Young children are such nasty little beasts!

When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favour.

The surest way to get a thing in this life is to be prepared for doing without it, to the exclusion even of hope.

The glittering baits of titles and honours are only for children and fools.

In spite of the honestest efforts to annihilate my I-ity, or merge it in what the world doubtless considers my better half, I still find myself a self-subsisting and alas! self-seeking me.

The longer one lives in this hard world motherless, the more a mother's loss makes itself felt ...

A positive engagement to marry a certain person at a certain time, at all haps and hazards, I have always considered the most ridiculous thing on earth.

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.

Use the noble gifts which God has given you!

If I have an antipathy for any class of people, it is for fine ladies. I almost match my Husband's detestation of partridge-shooting gentlemen.

Indeed, I should be very stupid or very thankless if I did not congratulate myself every hour of the day on the lot which it has pleased Providence to assign me. My Husband is so kind! So, in all respects, after my own heart!

A fashionable wife! Oh! Never will I be anything so heartless! I have pictured for myself a far higher destiny than this. - Will it ever be more than a picture?

I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for.

It is odd what notions men seem to have of the scantiness of a woman's resources. They do not find it anything out of nature that they should be able to exist by themselves; but a woman must always be borne about on somebody's shoulders, and dandled or chirped to, or it is supposed she will fall into the blackest melancholy!

One of the main uses of a home is to stay in it, when one is too weak and spiritless for conforming, without effort, to the ways of other houses.

Homeopathy - an invention of the Father of Lies! I have tried it and found it wanting. I would swallow their whole doles' medicine chest for sixpence, and be sure of finding myself neither better nor worse for it.