Quotes from Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A man's honor always seems to want to kill a woman to satisfy it.

Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning.

Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or 'broken heart' is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.

Shall you complain who feed the world? Who clothe the world? Who house the world? Shall you complain who are the world, Of what the world may do? As from this hour You use your power, The world must follow you!

The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.

What would have been the effect upon religion if it had come to us through the minds of women?

In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response.

In New York City, everyone is an exile, none more so than the Americans.

There are things in that wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will.Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.It is always the same shape, only very numerous.And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.

There's a whining at the threshold—There's a scratching at the floor—To work! To work! In Heaven's name!The wolf is at the door!

The people people choose for friendsYour common sense appall,But the people people marryAre the queerest folk of all.

Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.

The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.

The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society - more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.

The people people have for friends You common sense appall But the people people marry Are the queerest folk of all.

A man's honor always seems to want to kill a woman to satisfy it.

I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store.

The first duty of a human being is to assume the right relationship to society -- more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.

Through it [literature] we know the past, govern the present, and influence the future.

Its time we woke up," pursued Gerald, still inwardly urged to unfamiliar speech. "Women are pretty much people, seems to me. I know they dress like fools - but who's to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs, and design their crazy fashions, and what's more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common-sense clothes - and shoes - which of us wants to dance with her?

John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.

Never in all her life had she imagined that this idolized millinery could look, to those who paid for it, like the decorations of an insane monkey.

I always liked that Arab saying, 'First tie your camel and then trust in the Lord

A lifted world lifts women up," the Socalist explained. You cannot lift the world at all While half of it is kept so small," the Suffragist maintained. The world awoke, and tartly spoke: Your work is all the same; Work together or work apart, Work, each of you, with all your heart- Just get into the game!