Dinah Craik: Use

Dinah Craik was English novelist and poet. Explore interesting quotes on use.
Dinah Craik: 122   quotes 4   likes

“Let Thy wide hand
Gather us all — with none left out (O God!
Leave Thou out none!) from the east and from the west.”

Dinah Craik

"April", in Poems (1859)
Context: Awakener, come!
Fiing wide the gate of an eternal year,
The April of that glad new heavens and earth
Which shall grow out of these, as spring-tide grows
Slow out of winter's breast.
Let Thy wide hand
Gather us all — with none left out (O God!
Leave Thou out none!) from the east and from the west.
Loose Thou our burdens: heal our sicknesses;
Give us one heart, one tongue, one faith, one love.
In Thy great Oneness made complete and strong —
To do Thy work throughout the happy world —
Thy world, All-merciful, Thy perfect world.

God

“Give us one heart, one tongue, one faith, one love.
In Thy great Oneness made complete and strong —
To do Thy work throughout the happy world —
Thy world, All-merciful, Thy perfect world.”

Dinah Craik

"April", in Poems (1859)
Context: Awakener, come!
Fiing wide the gate of an eternal year,
The April of that glad new heavens and earth
Which shall grow out of these, as spring-tide grows
Slow out of winter's breast.
Let Thy wide hand
Gather us all — with none left out (O God!
Leave Thou out none!) from the east and from the west.
Loose Thou our burdens: heal our sicknesses;
Give us one heart, one tongue, one faith, one love.
In Thy great Oneness made complete and strong —
To do Thy work throughout the happy world —
Thy world, All-merciful, Thy perfect world.

Love , World , Faith , Strong

“The irrevocable Hand
That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut
The portals of our earthly destinies;
We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors
Close after us, for ever.”

Dinah Craik

"April", in Poems (1859)
Context: p>The irrevocable Hand
That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut
The portals of our earthly destinies;
We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors
Close after us, for ever.Pause, my soul,
On these strange words — for ever — whose large sound
Breaks flood-like, drowning all the petty noise
Our human moans make on the shores of Time.
O Thou that openest, and no man shuts;
That shut'st, and no man opens — Thee we wait!</p

“Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth.”

Dinah Craik

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 8
Context: 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.

Truth

“We too should be about our father's business —
O Christ, hear us!”

Dinah Craik

Poems (1866), Our Father's Business
Context: All that we know of Thee, or knowing not
Love only, waiting till the perfect time
When we shall know even as we are known —
O Thou Child Jesus, Thou dost seem to say
By the soft silence of these heavenly eyes
(That rose out of the depths of nothingness
Upon this limner's reverent soul and hand)
We too should be about our father's business —
O Christ, hear us!

Business , Christ

“It seemed as if she had given these treasures and left him alone — to use them or lose them, apply them or misapply them, according to his own choice. That is all we can do with children, when they grow into big children, old enough to distinguish between right and wrong, and too old to be forced to do either.”

Dinah Craik book The Little Lame Prince and his Travelling Cloak

Ch 7
The Little Lame Prince and his Travelling Cloak (1875)

Children

“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

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10

Women , People , Truth , Youth

“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

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10

People , Feeling , Time , Happiness

“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…”

Dinah Craik

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 8

Love , People , Smile , Hope

“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

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 11

Life , Women , God , World