Quotes from Jane Welsh Carlyle

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Oh Lord! If you but knew what a brimstone of a creature I am behind all this beautiful amiability!

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.

I can see that the Lady has a genius for ruling, whilst I have a genius for not being ruled.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to po or 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 favourably on the morality of the country?

In spite of honest 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.

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.

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

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!'

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.

Teaching, I find, is not the most amusing thing on earth; in fact, with a stupid lump for a Pupil, it is about the most irksome.

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.

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.

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

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?