Dinah Maria Craik Quotes & Sayings

The only way to meet affliction is to pass through it solemnly, slowly, with humility and faith, as the Israelites passed through the sea. Then its very ways of misery will divide, and become to us a wall, on the right side and on the left, until the gulf narrows before our eyes and we land safe on the opposite sore. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Though it is folly to suppose that happiness is a matter of volition, and that we can make ourselves content and cheerful whenever we choose a theory that many poor hypochondriacs are taunted with till they are nigh driven mad yet, on the other hand, no sane mind is ever left without the power of self-discipline and self-control in a measure, which measure increases in proportion as it is exercised. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

I felt a weight on my chest; a sense of hot indignation which settled down into inconceivable melancholy. — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

A lost love. Deny it who will, ridicule it, treat it as mere imagination and sentiment, the thing is and will be; and women do suffer therefrom, in all its infinite varieties: loss by death, by faithlessness or unworthiness, and by mistaken or unrequited affection. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

What small account The All-living seems to take of this thin flame Which we call life. He sends a moment's blast Out of war's nostrils, and a myriad Of these our puny tapers are blown out Forever. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Young Dandelion
On a hedge-side
Said young Dandelion
Who'll be my bride?
Said young Dandelion
With a sweet air,
I have my eye on
Miss Daisy fair. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

It is a curious truth and yet a truth forced upon us by daily observation that it is not the women who have suffered most who are the unhappy women. A state of permanent unhappiness not the morbid, half-cherished melancholy of youth, which generally wears off with wiser years, but that settled, incurable discontent and dissatisfaction with all things and all people, which we see in some women, is, with very rare exceptions, at once the index and the exponent of a thoroughly selfish character. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Why cannot one always do, not only the right thing, but at the right time? — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

O, the mulberry-tree is of trees the queen! Bare long after the rest are green; But as time steals onwards, while none perceives Slowly she clothes herself with leaves. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

There is nothing so absolute as the tyranny of weakness. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Down in the deep, up in the sky , I see them always, far or nigh, And I shall see them till I die The old familiar faces. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Every man for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Money is meant not for hoarding, but for using; the aim of life should be to use it in the right way - to spend as much as we can lawfully spend, both upon ourselves and others. And sometimes it is better to do this in our lifetime, when we can see that it is well spent, than to leave it to the chance spending of those that come after us. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

The plan of this world is infinite similarity and yet infinite variety. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

O how beautiful is morning!
How the sunbeams strike the daisies
And the kingcups fill the meadow
Like a golden-shielded army
Marching to the uplands fair. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

It does not do to tell great people anything unpleasant. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

What comfort there is in a cheerful spirit! how the heart leaps up to meet a sunshiny face, a merry tongue, an even temper, and a heart which either naturally, or, what is better, from conscientious principle, has learned to take all things on their bright side, believing that the Giver of life being all-perfect Love, the best offering we can make to Him is to enjoy to the full what He sends of good, and bear what He allows of evil! — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Queens you must always be: queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and your sons, queens of higher mystery to the world beyond ... But alas, you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Nothing but a speck we seem In the waste of waters round, Floating, floating like a dream, Outward bound. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

There is no sorrow under heaven which is, or ought to be, endless. To believe or to make it so, is an insult to Heaven itself. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

A secret at home is like rocks under tide. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

A perfect marriage is as rare as a perfect love. Could it be otherwise, when both men and women are so imperfect? Could aught else be expected? Yet all do expect it. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

God rest ye, little children; let nothing you afright,
For Jesus Christ, your Saviour, was born this happy night;
Along the hills of Galilee the white blocks sleeping lay,
When Christ, the child of Nazareth, was born on Christmas day. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

To accept the inevitable; neither to struggle against it nor murmur at it-this is the great lesson of life. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Many true words are spoken in jest. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

With faces like dead lovers who died true. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

The life of action is nobler than the life of thought. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

We have not to construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we find it, and make the best of it. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

We never know through what Divine mysteries of compensation the great Father of the universe may be carrying out His sublime plan; but those three words, "God is love " ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

One only "right" we have to assert in common with mankind
and that is as much in our hands as theirs
is the right of having something to do. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people as may be noticed of most young children does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Loud wind, strong wind, sweeping o'er the mountains,
Fresh wind, free wind, blowing from the sea,
Pour forth thy vials like streams from airy mountains,
Draughts of life to me. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

When the ship is going down we trouble ourselves little enough about the style of the cabin furniture. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

It is the Christmas time:
And up and down 'twixt heaven and earth,
In glorious grief and solemn mirth,
The shining angels climb. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

It is one of my decided opinions that married people ought to have no one, be the tie ever so close and dear, living permanently with them, to break the sacred duality - no, let me say the unity of their home. — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

About the greatest virtue a friend can have, is to be able to hold her tongue; and through this, like all virtues carried to extremity, may grow into a fault, and do great harm, still, it never can do so much harm as that horrible laxity and profligacy of speech which is a the root of half the quarrels, cruelties, and injustices of the world. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

According to the old joke, married people are often like little boys bathing, who cry with chattering teeth to the boys on the shore, 'Do come in, it's so warm' - it is not always warm. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Genius is original, unique; and in whatever form it may develop itself is the greatest gift that can be given to man, the strongest known link between the material life we have and the spiritual life that we can only guess at. Every great poet, painter, or musician - every inventor or man of science, every fine actor or orator, comes to us as the exponent of something diviner than we know. We cannot understand it, but we feel it, and acknowledge it. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

What a fatal thing in pictures, books, or human lives, is a lack of proportion. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

This is practically the language used to fallen women, and chiefly by their own sex: "God may forgive you, but we never can!" a declaration which, however common, in spirit if not in substance, is, when one comes to analyse it, unparalleled in its arrogance of blasphemy. That for a single offence, however grave, a whole life should be blasted, is a doctrine repugnant even to Nature's own dealings in the visible world. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

O the green things growing, the green things growing,
The faint sweet smell of the green things growing!
I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve,
Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Those whose own light is quenched are often the light-bringers. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

O, the sweet, sweet twilight just before the time of rest,
When the black clouds are driven away, and the stormy winds suppressed. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

If I had to write a book, I could not find anything in the world worth saying - as is indeed the case with many voluminous authors. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Alack, this world
Is full of change, change, change
nothing but change! — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Better no marriage, than a marriage short of the best. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

The man who does his work, any work, conscientiously, must always be in one sense a great man. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Our right or wrong use of money is the utmost test of character, as well as the root of happiness or misery, throughout our whole lives. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Forgotten? No, we never do forget:
We let the years go; wash them clean with tears,
Leave them to bleach out in the open day,
Or lock them careful by, like dead friends' clothes,
Till we shall dare unfold them without pain,
But we forget not, never can forget. — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

The sheriff listened uneasily to a sound, very uncommon at elections, of the populace expressing an opinion contrary to that of the lord of the soil. — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

A parent, unlike a poet, is not born - he is made. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Silence sweeter is than speech. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Do your neighbour good by all means in your power, moral as well as physical by kindness, by patience, by unflinching resistance against every outward evil by the silent preaching of your own contrary life. But if the only good you can do him is by talking at him, or about him nay, even to him, if it be in a self-satisfied, super-virtuous style such as I earnestly hope the present writer is not doing you had much better leave him alone. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

To have loved and lost, either by that total disenchantment which leaves compassion as the sole substitute for love which can exist no more, or by the slow torment which is obliged to let go day by day all that constitutes the diviner part of love namely, reverence, belief, and trust, yet clings desperately to the only thing left it, a long-suffering apologetic tenderness this lot is probably the hardest any woman can have to bear. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

There was never a night that had no morn. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Action is the parent of results; dormancy, the brooding mother of discontent. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Manhood had come to him, both in character and demeanour, not as it comes to most young lads, an eagerly-desired and presumptuously-asserted claim, but as a rightful inheritance, to be received humbly, and worn simply and naturally. — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

No virtue ever was founded on a lie. The truth, then, at all risks and costs the truth from the beginning. Make a clean breast to whomsoever you need to make it, and then face the world. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

The irrevocable Hand That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut The portals of our earthly destinies ; We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors Close after us, for ever. Pause, my soul , On these strange words for ever whose large sound Breaks flood-like, drowning all the petty noise Our human moans make on the shores of Time . O Thou that openest, and no man shuts; That shut'st, and no man opens Thee we wait! — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Autumn to winter, winter into spring, Spring into summer, summer into fall,
So rolls the changing year, and so we change; Motion so swift, we know not that we move. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

A preface is usually an excrescence on a good book, and a vain apology for a worthless one; — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

A person who is careless about money is careless about everything, and untrustworthy in everything. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Autumn
Into earth's lap does throw
Brown apples gay in a game of play,
As the equinoctials blow. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

God makes many poets, but he only gives utterance to a few. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

I have seen many a face that was more good-looking - never one that looked half so good. — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

The lad, like many another, owed nothing to his father but his mere existence - Heaven knows whether that gift is oftenest a curse or a boon. — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

One cannot make oneself, but one can sometimes help a little in the making of somebody else. It is well. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
Was born upon this day,
To save us all from Satan's power
When we were gone astray.
O tidings of comfort and joy!
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
Was born on Christmas Day. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

The world! It is a word capable of as diverse interpretations or misinterpretations as the thing itself a thing by various people supposed to belong to heaven, man, or the devil, or alternatively to all three. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Unless a woman has a decided pleasure and facility in teaching, an honest knowledge of everything she professes to impart, a liking for children, and, above all, a strong moral sense of her responsibility towards them, for her to attempt to enroll herself in the scholastic order is absolute profanation. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Human life is so full of pain, that once past the youthful delusion that a sad countenance is interesting, and an incurable woe the most delightful thing possible, the mind instinctively turns where it can get rest, and cheer and sunshine. And the friend who can bring to it the largest portion of these is, of a natural necessity, the most useful, the most welcome, and the most dear. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

It is not the smallest use to try to make people good, unless you try at the same time and they feel that you are trying to make them happy. And you rarely can make another happy, unless you are happy yourself. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Society, in the aggregate, is no fool. It is astonishing what an amount of "eccentricity" it will stand from anybody who takes the bull by the horns, too fearless or too indifferent to think of consequences. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

There are no judgments so harsh as those of the erring, the inexperienced, and the young. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

The present only is a man's possession; the past is gone out of his hand wholly, irrevocably. He may suffer from it, learn from it,
in degree, perhaps, expiate it; but to brood over it is utter madness. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Gossip, public, private, social to fight against it either by word or pen seems, after all, like fighting with shadows. Everybody laughs at it, protests against it, blames and despises it; yet everybody does it, or at least encourages others in it: quite innocently, unconsciously, in such a small, harmless fashion yet we do it. We must talk about something, and it is not all of us who can find a rational topic of conversation, or discuss it when found. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Wedlock's a lane where there is no turning. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

There can be there ought to be no medium course; a love-affair is either sober earnest or contemptible folly, if not wickedness: to gossip about it is, in the first instance, intrusive, unkind, or dangerous; in the second, simply silly. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Mine to the core of the heart, my beauty!
Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty:
Love given willingly, full and free,
Love for love's sake - as mine to thee.
Duty's a slave that keeps the keys,
But Love, the master, goes in and out
Of his goodly chambers with song and shout,
Just as he please - just as he please. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

The wonder is not that some married people are less happy than they hoped to be, but that any married people, out of the honeymoon, or even in it, are ever happy at all. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Never was there a thoroughly noble nature without some romance in it. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Now, I have nothing to say against uncles in general. They are usually very excellent people, and very convenient to little boys and girls. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Love never stands still; it must inevitably be either growing or decaying - especially the love of marriage. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Ethics, as has been well said, are the finest fruits of humanity, but they are not its roots — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

It may often be noticed, the less virtuous people are, the more they shrink away from the slightest whiff of the odour of un-sanctity. The good are ever the most charitable, the pure are the most brave. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Not perhaps until later life, until the follies, passions, and selfishness of youth have died out, do we ... recognize the the inestimable blessing, the responsibility awful as sweet, of possessing or of being a friend. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

[It] was the first time in my life I ever knew the meaning of that rare thing, tenderness. A quality different from kindliness, affectionateness, or benevolence; a quality which can exist only in strong, deep, and undemonstrative natures, and therefore in its perfection is oftenest found in men. — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

We are all of us very perfect creatures so long as we are not tried. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Sweet April-time-O cruel April-time! Year after year returning, with a brow Of promise, and red lips with longing paled, And backward-hidden hands that clutch the joys Of vanished springs, like flowers. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Happiness! Can any human being undertake to define it for another? — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

It is not work that kills, but "worry." — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

O blest one hour like this! to rise And see grief's shadows backward roll; While bursts on unaccustomed eyes The glad Aurora of the soul. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

As we sail through life towards death,
Bound unto the same port
heaven,
Friend, what years could us divide? — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water. We can feel it interpenetrating our whole being with warmth and strength; we can see it in a pale reflection shining elsewhere; or in its total absence, we, walking in darkness, learn to appreciate what it is by what it is not. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

We expect too much from our children. We exact from them a perfection which we are far from carrying out in ourselves; we require of them sacrifices much heavier, comparatively, than those of any grown-up person. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

A true test of friendship, to sit or walk with a friend for an hour in perfect silence , without wearying of one another's company. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

We are so scornful when we are young! — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Absence ... smothers into decay a rootless fancy but often nourishes the least seed of a true affection into full-flowering love. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik