Jane Welsh Carlyle Quotes
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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.
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I have lived so long among people who do not understand me, been so long accustomed to refrain and disguise myself for fear of being laughed at, that I have grown as difficult to come at as a snail in a shell; and what is worse, I cannot come out of my shell when I wish it.
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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!
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Does not a man physically tremble under the mere look of a wild beast or fellow-man that is stronger than himself? Does not a woman redden all over when she feels her lover's eyes on her? How then should one doubt the mysterious power of one individual over another?
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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.
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The habits of study in which I have been brought up have done much to support me. I never allow myself to be one moment unoccupied.
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I declare I would rather be a kitten and cry, 'Mew!' than live as I see many of my female acquaintances do, tearing each other's characters to pieces, and wearing out their lives in vanity and vexation of spirit.
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Who knows but I shall grow reasonable at last, descend from my ideal heaven to the real earth, marry, and - Oh Plato! - make a pudding?
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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.
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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.
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If they had said that the sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in creation than the words: 'Byron is dead!'
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Either I am just what God intended me for, or God cannot 'carry out' His intentions, it would seem.
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When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favour.
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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!'