Charlotte Perkins Gilman Quotes & Sayings

Grateful return for happiness conferred is not the method of exchange in a partnership. The comfort a man takes with his wife is not in the nature of a business partnership, nor are her frugality and industry. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

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. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Life is a verb, not a noun. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Patriotism, red hot, is compatible with the existence of a neglect of national interests, a dishonesty, a cold indifference to the suffering of millions. Patriotism is largely pride, and very largely combativeness. Patriotism generally has a chip on its shoulder. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide - plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

All social relations exist and grow in the human mind. That one despot can rule over a million other men rests absolutely on their state of mind. They believe that he does; let them change their minds, and he does not. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The most familiar facts are often hardest to understand. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Beauty has laws, and an appreciation of them is not possessed equally by all. The more primitive and ignorant a race, or class, the less it knows of true beauty. The Indian basket-maker wove beautiful things but they did not know it; give them the cheap and ugly productions of our greedy "market" and they like them better. They may unconsciously produce beauty, but they do not consciously select it. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A million million worlds that move in peace;A million mighty laws that never cease;And one small ant-heap, hidden by small weeds,Rich with eggs, slaves and store of millet-seeds.They sleep beneath the sodAnd trust in God. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The front pattern DOES move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Here she comes, running, out of prison and off the pedestal: chains off, crown off, halo off, just a live woman. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It cannot be too strongly asserted that the insistence on blind, unreasoning faith is due mainly to the maintenance of a subject-matter upon which there was no knowledge, namely the 'other world'; and that this basis was assumed because of early man's preoccupation with death. It is, unfortunately, quite possible to believe a thing which is contradicted by facts, especially if the facts are not generally known; but if the whole position on which we rested our religions had been visibly opposed by what we did know, even the unthinking masses would, in time, have noticed it. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A man does not have to stay at home all day, in order to love it; why should a woman? — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I ran against a Prejudice that quite cut off the view. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The people people have for friends
Your common sense appall
But the people people marry
Are the queerest folk of all. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

She is held from within by every hardened layer of untouched instinct which has accumulated through the centuries; she is opposed from without by such mountain ranges of prejudice as would be insurmountable if prejudice were made of anything real. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

When the mother of the race is free, we shall have a better world, by the easy right of birth and by the calm, slow, friendly forces of evolution. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

To be surrounded by beautiful things has much influence upon the human creature; to make beautiful things has more. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The difference is great between one's outside "life," the things which happen to one, incidents, pains and pleasures, and one's "living." — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A man's honor always seems to want to kill a woman to satisfy it. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

As for mother Eve - I wasn't there and can't deny the story, but I will say this. If she brought evil into the world, we men have had the lion's share of keeping it going ever since. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The home is the center and circumference, the start and the finish, of most of our lives. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A family unity which is only bound together with a table-cloth is of questionable value. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Only as we live, think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb and said, "They all feed one another," and called it good. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Most men's eyes, when you look at them critically, are not like that. They may look at you very expressively, but when you look at them, just as features, they are not very nice. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In our steady insistence on proclaiming sex-distinction we have grown to consider most human attributes as masculine attributes, for the simple reason that they were allowed to men and forbidden to women. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

the human mind was no better than in its earliest period of savagery, only better informed — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

There should be an end to the bitterness of feeling which has arisen between the sexes in this century. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

There are the two of you - the two sexes- to love and help one another. It must be a rich and wonderful world — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

But reason has no power against feeling, and feeling older than history is no light matter. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The children in this country are the one center and focus of all our thoughts. Every step of our advance is always considered in its effect on them-on the race. You see, we are MOTHERS, she repeated, as if in that she had said it all. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I was madly in love with not so much what was there as with what I supposed to be there. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Will you excuse us all," [Jeff] said, "if we admit that we find it hard to believe? There is no such-possibility-in the rest of the world."
Have you no kind of life where [asexual reproduction] is possible?" asked Zava.
"Why, yes-some low forms, of course."
"How low-or how high, rather? — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

And, as I traveled farther and farther, exploring the rich, sweet soul of her, my sense of pleasant friendship became but a broad foundation for such height, such breadth, such interlocked combination of feeling as left me fairly blinded with the wonder of it. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Let us inquire what glory there was in an omnipotent being torturing forever a puny little creature who could in no way defend himself? Would it be to the glory of a man to fry ants? — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I do not want to be a fly,I want to be a worm! — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Maternal instinct, merely as an instinct, is unworthy of our superstitious reverence. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The original necessity for the ceaseless presence of the woman to maintain that altar fire - and it was an altar fire in very truth at one period - has passed with the means of prompt ignition; the matchbox has freed the housewife from that incessant service, but the feeling that women should stay at home is with us yet. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Those who too patiently serve as props sometimes underrate the possibilities of the vine. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very ' bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so: ... — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I don't like to look out of the windows even--there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.
I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did? — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw - not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

When I see them knit,' Terry said, 'I can almost call them feminine.'
'That doesn't prove anything,' Jeff promptly replied. 'Scotch shepherds knit
always knitting. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

The religious need of the human mind remains alive, never more so, but it demands a teaching which can be understood. Slowly an apprehension of the intimate, usable power of God is growing among us, and a growing recognition of the only worth-while application of that power-in the improvement of the world. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It would have saved trouble had I remained Perkins from the first, this changing of women's names is a nuisance we are now happily outgrowing. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It is the duty of youth to bring fresh new powers to bear on Social progress. Each generation of young people should be to the world like a vast reserve force to a tired army. They should life the world forward. That is what they are for. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Woman in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

John doesn't know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.
It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

If only religion could be brought to take an interest in this earthly future, what a help it would be! ... Think of the appeal to the less spiritual of us, to those who never did get enthusiastic about eternity, or care so tenderly about their own souls, yet who could rise to the thought of improving this world for the children they love, and their children after them. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It is not for nothing that a man's best friends sigh when he marries, especially if he is a man of genius. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The female of the genus homo is economically dependent on the male. He is her food supply. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

We all need one another; much and often. Just as every human creature needs a place to be alone in, a sacred, private "home" of his own, so all human creatures need a place to be together in, from the two who can show each other their souls uninterruptedly, to the largest throng that can throb and stir in unison. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

This is the woman's century, the first chance for the mother of the world to rise to her full place ... and the world waits while she powders her nose. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In great cities where people of ability abound, there is always a feverish urge to keep ahead, to set the pace, to adopt each new fashion in thought and theory as well as in dress - or undress. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

it is only in social relations that we are human...to be human women must share in the totality of humanity's common life. Women, forced to lead restricted lives, retard all human progress. Growth of organism, the individual or social body requires use of all of our powers in four areas: physical, intellectual, spiritual and social — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able, - to dress and entertain, and order things — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Exciting literature after supper is not the best digestive. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Woman should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

New York - that unnatural city where every one is an exile, none more so than the American — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Architecture might be more sportive and varied if every man built his own house, but it would not be the art and science that we have made it; and while every woman prepares food for her own family, cooking can never rise beyond the level of the amateur's work. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It will be a great thing for the human soul when it finally stops worshipping backwards. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

[Warfare is] maleness in its absurdest extremes. Here is to be studied the whole gamut of basic masculinity, from the initial instinct of combat, through every form of glorious ostentation, with the loudest accompaniment of noise. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

One new indulgence was to go out evenings alone. This I worked out carefully in my mind, as not only a right but a duty. Why should a woman be deprived of her only free time, the time allotted to recreation? Why must she be dependent on some man, and thus forced to please him if she wished to go anywhere at night?
A stalwart man once sharply contested my claim to this freedom to go alone. "Any true man," he said with fervor, "is always ready to go with a woman at night. He is her natural protector." "Against what?" I inquired. As a matter of fact, the thing a woman is most afraid to meet on a dark street is her natural protector. Singular — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Have you no respect for the past? For what was thought and believed by your foremothers?"
"Why, no," she said. "Why should we? They are all gone. They knew less than we do. If we are not beyond them, we are unworthy of them - and unworthy of the children who must go beyond us. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

There's heaven. There it is. What more do we mean? People, free to come together, and in beauty - for growth. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

What we do modifies us more than what is done to us. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!
It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!
I don't want to go outside. I won't even if Jennie asks me to.
For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.
But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot loose my way. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

F a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency - what is one to do? ...
So I take phosphates or phosphites - whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas ... — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The fact that women in the home have shut themselves away from the thought and life of the world has done much to retard progress.We fill the world with the children of 20th century A.D. fathers and 20th century B.C. mothers. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The soaring, imaginative minds of men, constructing lofty, shimmering piles of abstract thought, and taking as their postulate a revelation from God, gaveus relgions which coule not possible maintained without belief and obedience: ... we find them most permanent and changeless among people who make the least effort to swquare their beliefs with the laws of life. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

We have built into the constitution of the human race the habit and desire of taking, as divorced from its natural precursor and concomitant of making. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Until mothers earn their livings, women will not — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

When we use our past merely as a guide-book, and concentrate our noble emotions on the present and future, we shall improve more rapidly. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.
But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!
Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.
I don't feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I'm getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.
Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Fine blunderers in ethics we are, so generally conveying to children the basic impression that pleasantness must be wrong, and right doing unpleasant! — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world we must do something. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

One religion after another has accepted and perpetuated man's original mistake in making a private servant of the mother of the race. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

[The Yellow Wallpaper] was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In the field of economics we maintain to this day some of the most primitive ideas, some of the most radically false ideas, some of the most absurd ideas a brain can hold ... but all this give no uneasiness to the average brain. That long-suffering organ has been trained for more thousands of years than history can uncover to hold in unquestioning patience great blocks of irrelevant idiocy and large active lies. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Specialization and organization are the basis of human progress. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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? — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

There was a time when Patience ceased to be a virtue. It was long ago. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman