Women Born In The 19th Century

"Tact is after all a kind of mind-reading."

"We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the heights and down to the water's edge."

""Step in some afternoon," he said, as affectionately as if I were a fellow-shipmaster wrecked on the lee shore of age like himself."

"The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man."

"Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading."

"It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance who knows what you know. I see so many new folks nowadays who seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation has got to have some root in the past, or else you have got to explain every remark you make, and it wears a person out."

"The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper — whether little or great, it belongs to Literature."

"Your patience may have long to wait, Whether in little things or great, But all good luck, you soon will learn, Must come to those who nobly earn. Who hunts the hay-field over Will find the four-leaved clover."

"A harbor, even if it is a little harbor, is a good thing, since adventurers come into it as well as go out, and the life in it grows strong, because it takes something from the world, and has something to give in return."

"The warm sun kissed the earth To consecrate thy birth, And from his close embrace Thy radiant face Sprang into sight, A blossoming delight."

"Dear robin," said this sad young flower, "Perhaps you'd not mind trying To find a nice white frill for me, Some day when you are flying?" "You silly thing!" the robin said; "I think you must be crazy! I'd rather be my honest self Than any made-up daisy. "You're nicer in your own bright gown, The little children love you; Be the best buttercup you can, And think no flower above you. "Though swallows leave me out of sight, We'd better keep our places; Perhaps the world would all go wrong With one too many daisies. "Look bravely up into the sky, And be content with knowing That God wished for a buttercup Just here, where you are growing."

"Feminist literary critics have shown how in the 19th century women writers began to acknowledge women as their muses and their role models...Margaret Fuller and Sarah Orne Jewett acknowledged their indebtedness to Madame de Staël, the author of Corinne...The list could be indefinitely extended to show the almost desperate search of writing women for authoritative female predecessors."

"The triumphal-procession-air which, in our manners and customs, is given to marriage at the outset — that singing of Te Deum before the battle has begun."

"Not a hundredth part of the thoughts in my head have ever been or ever will be spoken or written — as long as I keep my senses, at least."

"When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favour."

"The surest way to get a thing in this life is to be prepared for doing without it, to the exclusion even of hope."

"I can see that the Lady has a genius for ruling, whilst I have a genius for not being ruled."

"Instead of boiling up individuals into the species, I would draw a chalk circle round every individuality, and preach to it to keep within that, and preserve and cultivate its identity."

"Oh Lord! If you but knew what a brimstone of a creature I am behind all this beautiful amiability!"

"In spite of the honestest efforts to annihilate my I-ity, or merge it in what the world doubtless considers my better half, I still find myself a self-subsisting, and, alas! self-seeking me."

"A positive engagement to marry a certain person at a certain time, at all haps and hazards, I have always considered the most ridiculous thing on earth."

"If they had said that the sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in creation than the words: "Byron is dead!""

"I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for."

"Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in. Say I'm weary, say I'm sad, Say that health and wealth have missed me; Say I'm growing old, but add Jenny kissed me."

"The stranger is simply a friend I haven't met yet."

"A saint is a sinner who loves; it's that simple!"

"What is the market place? Is it the secular city? Is it the factual market place, that is to say the urban inner city? Is it suburbia where all the supermarkets are? No. The market place is simply the soul of man. It is the place where man trades his soul either to God or to the devil or to the 'in between', with indifference, tepidity and complacency."

"Identification [with the other] is difficult but precious. It involves doing violence to yourself. Yet Scripture says that "heaven is taken by violence" to oneself [Luke 16:16]. To identify oneself with the other is to love him beyond words, a total giving of oneself in truth."

"Here I want to reiterate very clearly that this Little Mandate did not come to me dictated, or as a whole, but as I am telling it now. Get the picture: it could happen any place, any time, in the midst of a group, in my office, at lunch in a cafeteria. Suddenly a little light, a little added word would come to me. I used to write them down on scraps of paper, on the back of old envelopes, in some diary, maybe lost or forgotten now; though some of them are still here. It was a patchy thing."

"To be simple is to accept the essence of the message and not try to twist it or adapt it to our own ideas. To be simple we must desire to remain in the image of God. We must not be so complex that we make God into our image! Simplicity is dying to self, an emptying."

"When we reach the silver sands and plunge into the great sea of God's silence, we begin to understand that he alone is God — Lover, Friend, the totality of gentleness, peace and rest. He calls us and we cannot resist that call. We have to be alone with him. It is a necessity, it is a hunger. It has been said that prayer is a hunger. But this Christ walks with loneliness and rejection, and so must we."

"Loving does not necessarily mean liking. But it still is loving, yes — totally, completely, utterly. Take the key of wisdom and unlock your own heart. Then let people in one by one. Listen to them, with full attention, with all your mind, heart, body and soul, unto exhaustion. And look! — the exhaustion will be lifted, and you will be able to listen still more. Yes, love must be communicated person to person; otherwise it will not be effective."

"Lord, give me the heart of a child, and the awesome courage to live it out as an adult."

"Everybody in this pragmatic, cerebral society always wants to put himself first, and this cannot be done. God doesn't want me to do it. God wants me to be third, never first. God comes first, my neighbor second, and I am third!"

"We do not go to mission lands to 'bring Jesus Christ' as much as to uncover him where he already is."

"What binds us together is love, and only love. For love is a Person. Love is God."

"The Lord said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Which means we must love ourselves first, for we are, in a manner of speaking, our first neighbor."

"Sometimes, in pentecostal gatherings, we treat prophecy too lightly. We don't seem to realize the agony of a prophet. Truly, there is no prophet who hasn't experienced agony."

"Every third-grader knows that prayer is the lifting up of one's heart and mind to God. But there are many ways of lifting. It begins with vocal prayer, the one all of us are so familiar with. It goes on to mental prayer and meditation, a prayer that all too many people are unfamiliar with. This "lifting" also includes the prayer of silence, the prayer of the heart, contemplative prayer, unknown to still more people."

"God gave us two commandments, to love God with our whole heart, mind and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.There is a lot of talk about the neighbor, but few mention the fact that before this we must love ourselves, "Your neighbor as yourself."What about this loving of ourselves? It doesn't take a vast sociological survey to tell us that very few people accept and love themselves in the proper way, love themselves so as to be able to properly love God and their neighbor."

"Yes, of course, the Christian has dogmas he must believe in order to be a Christian, but all those dogmas concern love which is the essence. God is love. Where love is, God is. Dogmas and tenets of the Christian faith without love are dead letters, not even worth spelling out."

"On the other hand, the Church cannot conform to the world as understood by Christ in his parables. To this world there can be neither conformity nor can we compromise with it. On the contrary, toward this world the Church and every Christian must be prophetic. We must cry out loudly the word of God, ready even to be stoned as were all the prophets sent by the Lord."

"Must the Church conform to the world and its modern ideas in order to be understood and heard? Much depends on the clarification of the word "conform." The answer is "yes" if by conform is meant change and adaptation in order to express eternal truths in a way more understandable to modern man."

"We cannot give the world anything it doesn't already have except God and God's love. But before we can give God to men, we must be one with him ourselves."

"Purity of heart is love for the weak who constantly fall."

"It is so important for us to have faith, trust, confidence in one another. It is the only way we can communicate. Without faith there is no communication, there is no love, or if there was a little love it will die without hope, trust, and confidence. Even if it doesn't die right away, it will be so ill, so weak, and so tired that communication will be miserable as well."

"Faith allows us to enter peacefully into the dark night which faces everyone of us at one time or another."

"Faith sees God's face in every human face."

"Real zeal is standing still and letting God be a bonfire in you."

"God reveals himself to those who wait for that revelation and who don't try to "tear at the hem of a mystery" forcing disclosure."