Jane Welsh Carlyle Quotes & Sayings

I do think there is much truth in the Young German idea that marriage is a shockingly immoral institution, as well as what we have long known it for - an extremely disagreeable one. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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!' — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

The glittering baits of titles and honours are only for children and fools. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favour. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

I wonder that among all the evils deprecated in the Liturgy, no one thought of inserting flitting. Is there any worse thing? Oh no, no! — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

I have lived so long among people who do not understand me, been so long accustomed to refrain and disguise myself for fear of being laughed at, that I have grown as difficult to come at as a snail in a shell; and what is worse, I cannot come out of my shell when I wish it. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

Young children are such nasty little beasts! — Jane Welsh Carlyle

It is odd what notions men seem to have of the scantiness of a woman's resources. They do not find it anything out of nature that they should be able to exist by themselves; but a woman must always be borne about on somebody's shoulders, and dandled or chirped to, or it is supposed she will fall into the blackest melancholy! — Jane Welsh Carlyle

Either I am just what God intended me for, or God cannot 'carry out' His intentions, it would seem. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

Men may be rivals, opponents in their fortunes, and yet be friends in their hearts and fair towards each other's worth; but woman, the instant she is rivaled, becomes unjust. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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? — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

If they had said that the sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in creation than the words: Byron is dead! — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

Cracked things often hold out as long as whole things; one takes so much better care of them! — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

The only thing that makes one place more attractive to me than another is the quantity of heart I find in it. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement. I will not try it. Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

The longer I live, the more I am certified that men, in all that relates to their own health, have not common sense! whether it be their pride, or their impatience, or their obstinancy, or their ingrained spirit of contradiction, that stupefies and misleads them, the result is always a certain amount of idiocy, or distraction in their dealings with their own bodies! ... either by their wild impatience of bodily suffering, and the exaggerated moan they make over it, or else by their reckless defiance of it, and neglect of every dictate of prudence! — 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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

Use the noble gifts which God has given you! — Jane Welsh Carlyle

People who are so dreadfully "devoted" to their wives are so apt, from mere habit, to get devoted to other people's wives as well. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

The less one does, as I long ago observed, the less one can find time to do. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor 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 favorably on the morality of the country? — Jane Welsh Carlyle

I rely on the promise, 'God is kind to women, fools, and drunk people.' — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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? — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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

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. — 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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

It is much to be wished that one had a post that knew what it was doing again; and lawmakers that knew what they were doing. If I were the Government, I should feel rather ashamed of making regulations one month and unmaking them the next. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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

Youth is so insatiable of happiness, and has such sublimely insane faith in its own power to make happy and be happy! — Jane Welsh Carlyle

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? — Jane Welsh Carlyle

'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. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

Indeed, I should be very stupid or very thankless if I did not congratulate myself every hour of the day on the lot which it has pleased Providence to assign me. My Husband is so kind! So, in all respects, after my own heart! — Jane Welsh Carlyle