Charlotte Perkins 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

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

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

The women who do the most work get the least money, and the women who have the most money do the least work. — 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

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

But we were made to believe and not allowed to think. We were told to obey, rather than to experiment and investigate. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

If we once admit that our life is here for the purpose of race-improvement, then we question any religion which does not improve the race, or the main force of which evaporates, as it were, directing our best efforts toward the sky ... Improvement in the human race is not accomplished by extracting any number of souls and placing them in heaven, or elsewhere. It must be established on earth, either through achievement in social service, or through better children. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

But only this-that people who are utterly ignorant will believe anything-which you certainly knew before. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

As to ethics, unfortunately, we are still at sea. We never did have any popular base for what little ethics we knew, except the religious theories, and now that our faith is shaken in those theories we cannot account for ethics at all. It is no wonder we behave badly, we are literally ignorant of the laws of ethics, which is the simplest of sciences, the most necessary, the most continuously needed. The childish misconduct of our 'revolted youth' is quite equaled by that of older people, and neither young nor old seem to have any understanding of the reasons why conduct is 'good' or 'bad. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

If fifty men did all the work, / And gave the price to five, / And let those five make all the rules - / You'd say the fifty men were fools, / Unfit to be alive. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The peculiarity of all death-based religions is that their subject-matter is entirely outside of facts. Men could think and think, talk and argue, advance, deny, assert, and controversy, and write innumerable books, without being hampered at any time by any fact. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The most serious injury is done in childhood. Our cruel waste of the nerve force of children is only more pathetic than it is absurd. The mere business of growing up ... which should be a process unconscious or full of joy and rich accumulation, is made by our ignorant mishandling a confusing, irritating, exhausting process, often leaving permanent injuries to the machine, as well as waste of power. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I have preferred chloroform to cancer — 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

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

So when the great word "Mother!" rang once more, I saw at last its meaning and its place; Not the blind passion of the brooding past, But Mother
the World's Mother
come at last, To love as she had never loved before
To feed and guard and teach the human race. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

Varium et mutabile! murmurs the man sagely - "A woman's privilege is to change her mind!" If the nature of his industry were such that he had to change his mind from cooking to cleaning, from cleaning to sewing, from sewing to nursing, from nursing to teaching, and so, backward, forward, crosswise and over again, from morning to night - he too would become adept in the lightning-change act. The man adopts one business and follows it. He develops special ability, on long lines, in connection with wide interests - and so grows broader and steadier. The distinction is there, but it is not a distinction of sex. This is why the man forgets to mail the letter. He is used to one consecutive train of thought and action. She, used to a varying zigzag horde of little things, can readily accommodate a few more. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

A normal feminine influence in recasting our religious assumptions will do more than any other one thing to improve the world. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

The stony-minded orthodox were right in fearing the first movement of new knowledge and free thought. It has gone on, and will go on, irresistibly, until some day we shall have no respect for an alleged "truth" which cannot stand the full blaze of knowledge, the full force of active thought. — 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

We have always had war," Terry explained ... "It is human nature."
"Human?" asked Ellador.
...
"Are some of the soldiers women?" she inquired.
"Women! Of course not! They are men; strong, brave men ... "
...
"Then why do you call it 'human nature?' she persisted. "If it was human wouldn't they both do it?"
...
"Do you call bearing children 'human nature'? she asked him. "It's woman nature," he answered. "It's her work."
"Then why do you not call fighting 'man nature'
instead of human? — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Not woman, but the condition of woman, has always been a doorway of evil. — 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

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

To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Legitimate sex-competition brings out all that is best in man. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

For men obsessed with women's underwear, a course in washing, ironing and mending is recommended. — 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

Love grows by service. — 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

To speak broadly, the troubles of life as we find them are mainly traceable to the heart or the purse. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

At any given period in history the ideas of the common mind are found to antedate the facts. The facts of the twentieth century are approached with the ideas, feelings, prejudices of the tenth. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!"
That silenced him for a few moments.
Then he said - very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!"
"I can't," said I. "The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!"
And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in. — 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

To-day there is hardly a woman of intelligence in all America ... who is not definitely and actively concerned in some social interest, who does not recognize some duty besides those incident to her own blood relationship. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The softest, freest, most pliable and changeful living substance is the brain-the hardest and most iron-bound as well. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The more women writers I read, from Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler to Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Toni Morrison, the less alone I felt, and the more I began to see myself as part of something more. It wasn't about one woman toiling against the universe. It was about all of us moving together, crying out into some black, inhospitable place that we would not be quiet, we would not go silently, we would not stop speaking, we would not give in. * — Kameron Hurley

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

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

The child learns more of the virtues needed in modern life-of fairness, of justice, of comradeship, of collective interest and action-in a common school than can be taught in the most perfect family circle — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

To work is not only a right, it is a duty. To work to the full capacity of one's powers is necessary for human development - the full use of one's best faculties - this is the health and happiness for both man and woman. — 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

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

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

We grovel and "worship" and pray to God to do what we ourselves ought to have done a thousand years ago, and can do now, as soon as we choose. — 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

We are pushed forward by the social forces, reluctant and stumbling, our faces over our shoulders, clutching at every relic of the past as we are forced along; still adoring whatever is behind us. We insist upon worshipping 'the God of our fathers.' Why not the God of our children? Does eternity only stretch one way? — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Where young boys plan for what they will achieve and attain, young girls plan for whom they will achieve and attain. — 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

You see, they were Mothers, not in our sense of helpless involuntary fecundity, forced to fill and overfill the land, every land, and then see their children suffer, sin, and die, fighting horribly with one another; but in the sense of Conscious Makers of People. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I want to marry you, Malda - because I love you - because you are young and strong and beautiful - because you are wild and sweet and - fragrant, and - elusive, like the wild flowers you love. Because you are so truly an artist in your special way, seeing beauty and giving it to others. I love you because of all of this, because you are rational and highminded and capable of friendship - and in spite of your cooking!"
"But - how do you want to live?"
"As we did here - at first," he said. "There was peace, exquisite silence. There was beauty - nothing but beauty. There were the clean wood odors and flowers and fragrances and sweet wild wind. And there was you - your fair self, always delicately dressed, with white firm fingers sure of touch in delicate true work. I loved you then. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

While we flatter ourselves that things remain the same, they are changing under our very eyes from year to year, from day to day. — 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

It does not do to trust people too much. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

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

The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty. From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now. — 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 so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The mother- poor invaded soul- finds even the bathroom door no bar to hammering little hands. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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. — 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 best proof of man's dissatisfaction with the home is found in his universal absence from it. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

including Edna Millay, there were five such women: essayist Maeve Brennan, columnist Neith Boyce, novelist Edith Wharton, and social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman. — Kate Bolick

The home is a human institution. All human institutions are open to improvement. — 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

California is a state peculiarly addicted to swift enthusiasms. It is a seed-bed of all manner of cults and theories, taken up, and dropped, with equal speed. — 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

Said I, in scorn all burning hot,In rage and anger high,You ignominious idiot,Those wings are made to fly! — Charlotte Perkins Gilman