Quotes from Mary Boykin Chesnut

I will laugh at the laughable while I breathe.

Women--wives and mothers--are the same everywhere.

Peace, comfort, quiet, happiness, I have found away from home. Only your own family, those nearest and dearest, can hurt you.

The weight that hangs upon our eyelids - is of lead.

She died praying that she might die.

Darkest of all Decembers ever has my life known, Sitting here by the embers, stunned, helpless, alone.

Is anything worth it?

We are divorced, North from South, because we have hated each other so. If we could only separate politely, and not have a horrid fight for divorce.

Richmond has fallen - and I have no heart to write about it... They are too many for us. Everything lost in Richmond, even our archives. Blue-black is our horizon.

I think this journal will be disadvantageous for me, for I spend my time now like a spider spinning my own entrails.

Oh, if I could put some of my reckless spirit into these discreet cautious lazy men!

There is no slave, after all, like a wife...Poor women, poor slaves All married women, all children and girls who live in their father's house are slaves.

I am always on the women's side.

Brutal men with unlimited power are the same all over the world.

I do not write often now - not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I see and hear. Why dwell upon it?