Gilman Quotes & Sayings

Hell is more like boredom, or not having enough to do, and too much time to contemplate one's deficiencies. — Dorothy 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

The best things arrive on time. — Dorothy Gilman

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

I am really indoors-y. I am a video game and movie buff, and this keeps me in my little boy cave. — Jared Gilman

It's compassion that makes gods of us. — Dorothy 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

Embody the three harmonies: within; with others; and with nature. — Robert Gilman

The classic epic fantasy is good versus evil, underdog against power. — Laura Anne 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

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

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

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

Everything matters terribly to children, you know, they're fresh and unformed ... — Dorothy Gilman

I have preferred chloroform to cancer — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Children put everything in perspective, they remind you of what's important, you see the world anew through there eyes. — Priscilla 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

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

We're all inadequate," David answered. "Just think: the light from the outside world is mapped onto the retina, then further mapped onto the visual cortex, then broken apart and analyzed in other areas of the brain. At every step there's a loss of information. In the end, what we are aware of is not the outside world per se, but the image of the world projected onto our brains. Plato was anatomically right; we do see shadows on a wall. — Carolyn Ives 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

Before 'Moonrise,' I never thought I would be in a movie where I would be struck by lightning. — Jared 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

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

Only the United States of America deemed ice cream "an essential item for troop morale." And so it alone continued producing, ordering ice cream freezers on submarines, ice cream freezers on tankers, ice cream freezers on cargo ships. Over the course of the war, the United States military became the largest ice cream manufacturer in history. — Susan Jane 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

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

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

People need dreams, there's as much nourishment in 'em as food. — Dorothy Gilman

Manhattan in the morning is a living stream of Purpose; everyone's got a place to be and a problem on their mind. That doesn't mean it's and unfriendly place
just busy and preoccupied. Personally, I love it. I'm a social creature but there are times and places you just don't want to do more than grunt at your fellow human being. — Laura Anne Gilman

I'm kind of a huge movie buff and a video game nerd person. — Jared 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

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

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

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

Exciting literature after supper is not the best digestive. — 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

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

I tend not to reread books, because there's always something new to discover, but Dorothy Sayers is a comfort grab for me - there's no mood so bleak or cold so bad that Lord Peter and Bunter can't make it right. — Laura Anne 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

It's terribly important for everyone, at any age, to live to his full potential. Otherwise a kind of dry rot sets in, a rust, a disintegration of personality, — Dorothy 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

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

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

I'm aware that there is a bigger, far more complicated world out there than I'd ever realized, and just like the students at Beijing University, I've glimpsed it only fleetingly, peripherally. I've sensed the vast expanse of my own ignorance now. I feel antsy and constricted and a deep, almost sexual yearning for velocity, for some sort of raw, transcendent experience that I cannot even begin to articulate. — Susan Jane Gilman

Everything else was in the past, and the past no longer mattered. — Laura Anne 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

Happy hour?" Jason says. "It's barely noon, Grams"
"Oh, shush, you. You'll have some, yes?'
"Well"-he smiles slyly and wiggles his eyebrows-"if you insist". Every time, it's the same thing. Leaning in, he rubs his hands together expectantly. The drinking age in New York State was raised last year, so technically, I suppose, this is still illegal for my grandson. But the Jews didn't spend forty years wandering the desert so that I could forfeit a gin and tonic with my progeny ... — Susan Jane Gilman

Carstairs looked grim. "I gave Mrs. Pollifax to Interpol like a gift and they give every evidence of having discarded her like a boring Christmas tie."
Bishop said soberly, "Well, you know she doesn't look like a gift at first glance, sir. She confuses people by looking the nice cozy grandmother type. — Dorothy Gilman

I'm not so arrogant to think I'm the only guide someone needs ... but I might be the guide that someone needs. — Laura Anne 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

My name is John Creedmoor, and I would like to confess my crimes. Hope you all weren't going anywhere this week ... — Felix Gilman

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

I think the technology today is so much more advanced that it gives kids a lot more freedom ... Back then it was a lot different. — Jared Gilman

Both therapy and friendship possessed the common denominator of discovering a self ... — Dorothy Gilman

I think getting up every morning is the most amazing thing any of us do. We know what's out there, and yet we keep going. — Laura Anne 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

A reviewer once commented that my urban fantasy novels were paced more like epic fantasy, in that they relied on complex world-building and a gradual immersion in the lives of the characters. — Laura Anne Gilman

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

Clowns - feh! All that ghastly, forced gaiety, worse than New Year's Eve. — Susan Jane 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

Give up Robert." He opened his eyes. "Quit now and we'll go easy on you." -Price Sisters — Charles 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

He scanned the page looking for an entry that read, "Help! I'm Almost Thirteen Years Old and I Still Have the Muscles of a Third-Grader!" but apparently Robert's condition was so freakish and rare, the authors of the book didn't even bother to include it. — Charles 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

To die this way seems so random, so trivial. I have been robbed of meaning before being robbed of life. To die in darkness, alone -- for what purpose was I ever alive. It is as if I emerged from darkness into delusion, then sank back into darkness forever. — Carolyn Ives Gilman

Approximately seventy percent of the female population is on a diet at any given time. More women diet than vote. — Susan Jane Gilman

People misunderstood death, they died not of too little life but of too much life, that as the skin withered and the future grew short it was the past that took on flesh, until ultimately the sheer accumulation of experience and memory became too heavy to carry. — Dorothy 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

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

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

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

Who the hell knows where they get these farkakte names for their kids. One of Rita's friends named her son Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva Rosenblatt. Can you imagine? Rita always says, 'It's no big deal. They call him 'Bodi', is all.' Please. And the newspapers say I'm abusive to children? — Susan Jane Gilman

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

I'm a huge movie buff, so I'm a fan of a lot of actors and actresses. — Jared Gilman

My rebelliousness went so deep that, faced with a can of asparagus that instructed me to open at this end, I always, stubbornly, opened it at the other. — Dorothy Gilman

And wished with all her heart that she wasn't so tired, wished that a broken wrist would radiate violent pain instead of this strange numbing ache that was exhausting her by its subtlety and consistency. — Dorothy Gilman

I have more enemies than I deserve," I said. "I am fighting a losing battle, me against the world. The next century is at stake. Time is running out and my optimism is sorely strained."
"Yeah?" he said. "I was young once too. — Felix 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

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

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

I discovered I loved acting at a Summer Camp. That's when I really realised that I enjoyed it and that I wanted to try it. — Jared Gilman

Sure, beauty has the power to excite men. But so does a box of donuts. — Susan Jane Gilman