Jane Welsh Carlyle

“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.”

“Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.”

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

“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.”

“How many precious things do we not already possess which others have not - have hardly an idea of! Let us enjoy these, then, and bless God that we are permitted to enjoy them, rather than importune His goodness with vain longings for more.”

“'On earth the living have much to bear;' the difference is chiefly in the manner of bearing, and my manner of bearing is far from being the best.”

“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?”

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

“I rely on the promise, 'God is kind to women, fools, and drunk people.'”

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

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

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Use the noble gifts which God has given you!”

“Young children are such nasty little beasts!”

“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.”

“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?”

“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!'”