Travel Writers

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Happiness! Can any human being undertake to define it for another?"

"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"

"It is hardly possible to over-calculate the evils accruing to individuals and to society in general from this custom, gradually increasing, of late and ultra-prudent marriages. Parents bring up their daughters in luxurious homes, expecting and exacting that the home to which they transfer them should be of almost equal ease; forgetting how next to impossible it is for such a home to be offered by any young man of the present generation, who has to work his way like his father before him. Daughters, accustomed to a life of ease and laziness, are early taught to check every tendency towards "a romantic attachment" — the insane folly of loving a man for what he is, rather than for what he has got; of being content to fight the worldly battle hand-in-hand — with a hand that is worth clasping, rather than settle down in comfortable sloth, protected and provided for in all external things. Young men … But words fail to trace the lot of enforced bachelorhood, hardest when its hardship ceases to be consciously felt."

"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."

"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."

"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."

""Believe only half of what you see, and nothing that you hear," is a cynical saying, and yet less bitter than at first appears. It does not argue that human nature is false, but simply that it is human nature. How can any fallible human being with two eyes, two ears, one judgment, and one brain — all more or less limited in their apprehensions of things external, and biased by a thousand internal impressions, purely individual — how can we possibly decide on even the plainest actions of another, to say nothing of the words, which may have gone through half-a-dozen different translations and modifications, or the motives, which can only be known to the Omniscient Himself?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"What on earth should we do if we had no matches to make, or mar; no "unfortunate attachments" to shake our heads over; no flirtations to speculate about and comment upon with knowing smiles; no engagements "on" or "off" to speak our minds about, nosing out every little circumstance, and ferreting out our game to their very hole, as if all their affairs, their hopes, trials, faults, or wrongs, were being transacted for our own private and peculiar entertainment! Of all forms of gossip — I speak of mere gossip, as distinguished from the carrion-crow and dunghill-fly system of scandal-mongering — this tittle-tattle about love-affairs is the most general, the most odious, and the most dangerous. Every one of us must have known within our own experience many an instance of dawning loves checked, unhappy loves made cruelly public, happy loves embittered, warm, honest loves turned cold, by this horrible system of gossiping about young or unmarried people..."

"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!""

"These "Thoughts," a portion of which originally appeared in "Chambers' Journal," are, I wish distinctly to state, only Thoughts. They do not pretend to solve any problems, to lay down any laws, to decide out of one life's experience and within the limits of one volume, any of those great questions which have puzzled generations, and will probably puzzle generations more. They lift the banner of no party; and assert the opinions of no clique. They do not even attempt an originality, which, in treating of a subject like the present, would be either dangerous or impossible. In this book, therefore, many women will find simply the expression of what they have themselves, consciously or unconsciously, oftentimes thought; and the more deeply, perhaps, because it has never come to the surface in words or writing. Those who do the most, often talk — sometimes think — the least: yet thinkers, talkers, and doers, being in earnest, achieve their appointed end. The thinkers put wisdom into the mouth of the speakers, and both strive together to animate and counsel the doers. Thus all work harmoniously together; and verily "Was never good work wrought, Without beginning of good thought.""

"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."

"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."

"I am but as others: I am but what I was born to be." "Do you recognize what you were born to be? Not only a nobleman, but a gentleman; not only a gentleman, but a man — man, made in the image of God. How can you, how dare you, give the lie to your Creator?" "What has He given me? What have I to thank Him for?" "First, manhood; the manhood His Son disdained not to wear; worldly gifts, such as rank, riches, influence, things which others have to spend half an existence in earning; life in its best prime, with much of youth yet remaining — with grief endured, wisdom learnt, experience won. Would to Heaven, that by any poor word of mine I could make you feel all that you are — all that you might be!" A gleam, bright as a boy's hope, wild as a boy's daring, flashed from those listless eyes — then faded. "You mean, Mr. Halifax, what I might have been. Now it is too late." "There is no such word as 'too late,' in the wide world — nay, not in the universe. What! shall we, whose atom of time is but a fragment out of an ever-present eternity — shall we, so long as we live, or even at our life's ending, dare to cry out to the Eternal One, 'It is too late!'"

"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."

"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."

"I think a wife is bound to the very last to obey in all things not absolutely wrong, her husband's will."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I am a Christian. I shall not return blow for blow."

"Lad, I thought so. Thee hast found the curse of man's life—woman."

"It's astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it."

""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."

"Douglas, Douglas, tender and true!"

"Oh, if I could live four weeks longer! but no matter, no matter!"

"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!'"

"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."

"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."

"[T]he only real parting is when there is no love left to part from."

"Dad, you hit the wrong target when you write that you wish I were at Princeton living "in the even tenor of my way." I hate that expression and as far as I am able I intend to avoid that condition. When impulse and spontaneity fail to make my "way" as uneven as possible then I shall sit up nights inventing means of making life as conglomerate and vivid as possible. Those who live in the even tenor of their way simply exist until death ends their monotonous tranquility. No, there's going to be no even tenor with me. The more uneven it is the happier I shall be. And when my time comes to die, I'll be able to die happy, for I will have done and seen and heard and experienced all the joy, pain, thrills—every emotion that any human ever had—and I'll be especially happy if I am spared a stupid, common death in bed. So, Dad, I'm afraid your wish will always come to naught, for my way is to be ever changing, but always swift, acute and leaping from peak to peak instead of following the rest of the herd, shackled in conventionalities, along the monotonous narrow path in the valley. The dead have reached perfection when it comes to even tenor!"

"SOUTHERLY GALES RAIN SQUALLS LEE RAIL UNDER WATER WET BUNKS HARDTACK BULLY BEEF HAVING WONDERFUL TIME WISH YOU WERE HERE INSTEAD OF ME"

"Youth -- nothing else worth having in the world...and I had youth, the transitory, the fugitive, now, completely and abundantly. Yet what was I going to do with it? Certainly not squander its gold on the commonplace quest for riches and respectability, and then secretly lament the price that had to be paid for these futile ideals. Let those who wish have their respectability -- I wanted freedom, freedom to indulge in whatever caprice struck my fancy, freedom to search in the farthermost corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous and the romantic."

"You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track — the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on."

"I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind — my wayward heart creates its own misery — Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child — long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it."

"Good habits, imperceptibly fixed, are far preferable to the precepts of reason; but, as this task requires more judgment than generally falls to the lot of parents, substitutes must be sought for, and medicines given, when regimen would have answered the purpose much better. I believe those who examine their own minds, will readily agree with me, that reason, with difficulty, conquers settled habits, even when it is arrived at some degree of maturity: why then do we suffer children to be bound with fetters, which their half-formed faculties cannot break. In writing the following work, I aim at perspicuity and simplicity of style; and try to avoid those unmeaning compliments, which slip from the tongue, but have not the least connexion with the affections that should warm the heart, and animate the conduct. By this false politeness, sincerity is sacrificed, and truth violated; and thus artificial manners are necessarily taught. For true politeness is a polish, not a varnish; and should rather be acquired by observation than admonition."

"Virtue can only flourish amongst equals."

"It may be confidently asserted that no man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. And the desire of rectifying these mistakes, is the noble ambition of an enlightened understanding, the impulse of feelings that Philosophy invigorates."

"Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world; and this is not a woman's province in a married state. Her sphere of action is not large, and if she is not taught to look into her own heart, how trivial are her occupations and pursuits! What little arts engross and narrow her mind!"

"Ideas of female equality were in the air during and after the Revolution. Tom Paine spoke out for the equal rights of women. And the pioneering book of Mary Wollstonecraft in England, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, was reprinted in the United States shortly after the Revolutionary War. Wollstonecraft was responding to the English conservative and opponent of the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, who had written in his Reflections on the Revolution in France that "a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order." She wrote: "I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, with delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love... will soon become objects of contempt....I wish to show that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex.""

"According to Wollstonecraft, "Independence is the grand blessing of life"… Wollstonecraft here refers to both economic independence and independent opinion. Education is the key to both."

"She strove to reconcile integrity and sexual desire, the duties and needs of women, motherhood and intellectual life, domesticity and fame."

"Women have crucified the Mary Wollstonecrafts, the Fanny Wrights, and the George Sands of all ages. Men mock us with the fact and say we are ever cruel to each other... If this present woman must be crucified, let men drive the spikes."

"Wollstonecraft was an Enlightenment philosopher who argued for the rule of reason and the education of women, and against monarchy and slavery. Her "radical" views earned her the epithet "a hyena in petticoats," most likely from an ancestor of Bill O'Reilly."