Chesnut Quotes & Sayings

Women
wives and mothers
are the same everywhere. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

The weight that hangs upon our eyelids - is of lead. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

The nut of this tree is hung high aloft, wrapped in a silk wrapper, which is enclosed in a case of sole leather, which again is packed in a mass of shock absorbing, vermin proof pulp, sealed up in a waterproof, ironwood case, and finally cased in a vegetable porcupine of spines, almost impregnable. There is no nut so protected; there is no nut in our woods to compare with it as food. What is a Chesnut? — Luis De Camoes

Brutal men with unlimited power are the same all over the world. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

I will laugh at the laughable while I breathe. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

I do not allow myself vain regrets or foreboding. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

Oh, if I could put some of my reckless spirit into these discreet cautious lazy men! — Mary Boykin Chesnut

A freshet in the autumn does not compensate for a drought in the spring. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

I am always on the women's side. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

Richmond has fallen - and I have no heart to write about it ... They are too many for us. Everythign lost in Richmond, even our archives. Blue-black is our horizon. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

She died praying that she might die. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

Of all our sorrows, memory is the worst. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

I think this journal will be disadvantageous for me, for I spend my time now like a spider spinning my own entrails. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

Like the resource it seeks to protect, wildlife conservation must be dynamic, changing as conditions change, seeking always to become more effective. — Rachel Carson

Peace, comfort, quiet, happiness, I have found away from home. Only your own family, those nearest and dearest, can hurt you. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

And you have your choices,
And these are what make man great,
His ladder to the stars. — Mumford & Sons

I do not write often now - not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I see and hear. Why dwell upon it? — Mary Boykin Chesnut

We are scattered, stunned; the remnant of heart left alive is filled with brotherly hate ... Whose fault? Everybody blamed somebody else. Only the dead heroes left stiff and stark on the battlefield escape. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

At times Valentine wasn't sure whether he kept Matthews about because of his supreme unctuousness or because he had half a suspicion the valet was trying to kill him. — Suzanne Enoch

Is anything worth it? — Mary Boykin Chesnut

Darkest of all Decembers ever has my life known, Sitting here by the embers, stunned, helpless, alone. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

I think incompatibility of temper began when it was made plain to us that we get all the opprobrium of slavery while they, with their tariff, get the money there is in it. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

There is no slave, after all, like a wife ... Poor women, poor slaves All married women, all children and girls who live in their father's house are slaves. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

Many people in Europe and the U.S. dispute the thesis that we are living through a clash of civilisations between Islam and the west. But a radical minority of Muslims firmly believes that Islam is under siege, and is committed to winning the holy war it has declared against the West. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Is the sea drying up? It is going up into mist and coming down on us in this water spout, the rain. It raineth every day, and the weather represents our tearful despair on a large scale. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

Well, that's a very interesting question," he said - to which he had no interesting or even sane answer. He simply conceded that if the Messiah came back and reconvened the Sanhedrin, well, then, yes - though mere mortals like ourselves might not see the wisdom of it - homosexuals, adulteresses, witches, and Sabbath breakers would be killed, and every other barbaric prescription found in the Old Testament would apply. As I was contemplating where on his person I should aim my vomit, he managed this final defense of his religion: "You just don't understand what an obscenity - what a sacrilege - these things would represent in the presence of the Messiah — Sam Harris

Threatened men live long. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

To think there are men who dare so defile a church, a sacred sanctuary dedicated to God. We have to hold up our skirts and walk tiptoe, so covered is the floor, the aisle and pews, with the dark shower of tobacco juice. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

Forgiveness is indifference. Forgiveness is impossible while love lasts. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

We are divorced, North from South, because we have hated each other so. If we could only separate politely, and not have a horrid fight for divorce. — Mary Boykin Chesnut