Best 151 quotes of Charlotte Perkins Gilman on MyQuotes

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    A concept is stronger than a fact.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    A family unity which is only bound together with a table-cloth is of questionable value.

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    Charlotte Perkins 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.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    A man does not have to stay at home all day, in order to love it; why should a woman?

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    A million million worlds that move in peace;A million mighty laws that never cease;And one small ant-heap, hidden by small weeds,Rich with eggs, slaves and store of millet-seeds.They sleep beneath the sodAnd trust in God.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    And woman should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

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    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.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    As for mother Eve - I wasn't there and can't deny the story, but I will say this. If she brought evil into the world, we men have had the lion's share of keeping it going ever since.

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    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.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    At any given period in history the ideas of the common mind are found to antedate the facts. The facts of the twentieth century are approached with the ideas, feelings, prejudices of the tenth.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way — it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.

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    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.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    Concepts antedate facts.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    Exciting literature after supper is not the best digestive.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    Fine blunderers in ethics we are, so generally conveying to children the basic impression that pleasantness must be wrong, and right doing unpleasant!

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    For men obsessed with women's underwear, a course in washing, ironing and mending is recommended.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    Grateful return for happiness conferred is not the method of exchange in a partnership. The comfort a man takes with his wife is not in the nature of a business partnership, nor are her frugality and industry.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    Habits of thought persist through the centuries; and while a healthy brain may reject the doctrine it no longer believes, it will continue to feel the same sentiments formerly associated with that doctrine.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    However, one cannot put a quart in a pint cup.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    If fifty men did all the work, / And gave the price to five, / And let those five make all the rules - / You'd say the fifty men were fools, / Unfit to be alive.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    I have preferred chloroform to cancer

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    In business life, that is, in its material processes, we eagerly accept the new. In social life, in all our social processes, we piously, valiantly, obdurately, maintain the old.

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    Charlotte Perkins 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.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    In New York City, everyone is an exile, none more so than the Americans.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    In our steady insistence on proclaiming sex-distinction we have grown to consider most human attributes as masculine attributes, for the simple reason that they were allowed to men and forbidden to women.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    In the field of economics we maintain to this day some of the most primitive ideas, some of the most radically false ideas, some of the most absurd ideas a brain can hold. ... but all this give no uneasiness to the average brain. That long-suffering organ has been trained for more thousands of years than history can uncover to hold in unquestioning patience great blocks of irrelevant idiocy and large active lies.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    I ran against a Prejudice that quite cut off the view.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    It cannot be too strongly asserted that the insistence on blind, unreasoning faith is due mainly to the maintenance of a subject-matter upon which there was no knowledge, namely the 'other world'; and that this basis was assumed because of early man's preoccupation with death. It is, unfortunately, quite possible to believe a thing which is contradicted by facts, especially if the facts are not generally known; but if the whole position on which we rested our religions had been visibly opposed by what we did know, even the unthinking masses would, in time, have noticed it.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    It is not for nothing that a man's best friends sigh when he marries, especially if he is a man of genius.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    It is not that women are really smaller-minded, weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating, but that whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a small, dark place, is always guarded, protected, directed and restrained, will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    It is the duty of youth to bring fresh new powers to bear on Social progress. Each generation of young people should be to the world like a vast reserve force to a tired army. They should life the world forward. That is what they are for.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb and said, "They all feed one another," and called it good.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    Its time we woke up,” pursued Gerald, still inwardly urged to unfamiliar speech. “Women are pretty much people, seems to me. I know they dress like fools - but who’s to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs, and design their crazy fashions, and what’s more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common-sense clothes - and shoes - which of us wants to dance with her?

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    I was climbing up a mountain-path With many things to do, Important business of my own, And other people's too, When I ran against a Prejudice That quite cut off the view.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    Legitimate sex-competition brings out all that is best in man.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    Let us inquire what glory there was in an omnipotent being torturing forever a puny little creature who could in no way defend himself? Would it be to the glory of a man to fry ants?

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    Life is a verb, not a noun.

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    Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    Love grows by service.