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Dinah Craik

80 quotes

“[T]he only real parting is when there is no love left to part from.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) first seen 1856 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Last House in C— Street", in Nothing New: Tales (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1857), Vol. II, p. 130; story first published in Fraser's Magazine (1856)
“Douglas, Douglas, tender and true!”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Douglas, Tender and True", refrain. Attributed to Craik in The Spectator (24 December 1859)—cited in Notes and Queries, ser. 2, vol. 9, no. 213 (28 January 1860), p. 71
“We never know through what divine mysteries of compensation the Great Father of the universe may be carrying out His sublime plan; and those three words, "God is love," ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) first seen 1863 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mistress and Maid (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1863), Ch. 25, p. 304
“When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Christian's Mistake (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1865), Ch. 2, p. 64
“And when I lie in the green kirkyard, With the mould upon my breast, Say not that 'She did well — or ill,' Only, 'She did her best!'”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Christian's Mistake (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1865), Ch. 7, p. 140
“Oh, if I could live four weeks longer! but no matter, no matter!”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) first seen 1887 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last words, after suffering a heart attack, while in a period of preparation for her adopted daughter Dorothy's wedding (12 October 1887)
“Get out o' Mr. Fletcher's road, ye idle, lounging, little —""Vagabond," I think the woman (Sally Walkins, once my nurse,) was going to say, but she changed her mind.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lad, I thought so. Thee hast found the curse of man's life—woman.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am a Christian. I shall not return blow for blow.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“John held strongly the opinion that so solemn a festival as marriage is only desecrated by outward show.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Half the sting of poverty is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort and not for the comments of one's neighbours.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wonder," he said at last, "if, when I was born, father was as young as I am: whether he felt as I do now. You cannot think what an awful joy it is to be looking forward to a child; a little soul of God's giving, to be made fit for His eternity. How shall we do it! we that are both so ignorant, so young—she will be only just nineteen when, please God, her baby is born. Sometimes, of an evening, we sit for hours on this bench, she and I, talking of what we ought to do, and how we ought to rear the little thing, until we fall into silence, awed at the blessing that is coming to us.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think either parent would have looked amazed had any one pitied them for having a blind child. The loss—a loss only to them, and not to her, the darling!—became familiar, and ceased to wound; the blessedness was ever new.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I hold every man's faith so sacred, that no other man has a right to interfere with it, or to question it. The matter lies solely between himself and his Maker.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think a wife is bound to the very last to obey in all things not absolutely wrong, her husband's will.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You want to found a family. [...] [A]ll coming generations shall live to the honour and glory of your name—our name—" "My boy, there is only one Name to whose honour we should all live.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In marriage there must be perfect unity;—one aim, one faith, one love, or the marriage is incomplete, unholy—a mere civil contract and no more.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is often easiest to lose those we are fond of and who are fond of us, because in one sense we never can really lose them. Nothing in this world, nor, I believe, in any other, can part those who truly and faithfully love.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one but me ever knew all his goodness, no one but himself ever knew how dearly I loved your father. We were more precious each to each than anything on earth; except His service, who gave us to one another.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For truly, the greatest of all external blessings is it to be able to lean your heart against another heart, faithful, tender, true, and tried, and record with a thankfulness that years deepen instead of diminishing, "I have got a friend!”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nevertheless, taking life as a whole, believing that it consists not in what we have, but in our power of enjoying the same; that there are in it things nobler and dearer than ease, plenty, or freedom from care — nay, even than existence itself; surely it is not Quixotism, but common-sense and Christianity, to protest that love is better than outside show, labour than indolence, virtue than mere respectability”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happiness! Can any human being undertake to define it for another?”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happiness is not an end — it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have not to construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we find it, and make the best of it.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only way to make people good, is to make them happy.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]here are no judgments so harsh as those of the erring, the inexperienced, and the young.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Autumn to winter — winter into spring — Spring into summer — summer into fall — Thus rolls the changing year, and thus we change; Motion so swift we know not that we move.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lo! all life this truth declares! Laborare est orare; And the whole earth rings with prayers.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The buttercups across the field Made sunshine rifts of splendour.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Immortality Alone could teach this mortal how to die.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source