Jane Welsh Carlyle Quotes

Jane Welsh Carlyle was a Scottish writer. She was the wife of essayist Thomas Carlyle.

Their long marriage was close but tempestuous, complicated by other relationships on both sides, though these appear to have been platonic, as their own was believed to have been. Jane had first been introduced to Thomas by her tutor, who was in love with her but unable to break his engagement. Her closest romantic relationship seems to have been with Geraldine Jewsbury, though she resented Jewsbury’s free love life. Jane’s many passionate letters to her caught the interest of Virginia Woolf.

✵ 14. January 1801 – 21. April 1866
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Jane Welsh Carlyle: 11   quotes 1   like

Famous Jane Welsh Carlyle Quotes

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

Letter to Thomas Carlyle (28 September 1845).

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

Letter to Thomas Carlyle http://books.google.com/books?id=Fj10a_dl7IwC&q=%22I+am+not+at+all+the+sort+of+person+you+and+I+took+me+for%22&pg=PA32#v=onepage (7 May 1822).

“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.”

Letter to John Sterling http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/carlyle/jwclam/lam101.html#LM1-5 (15 June 1835).

Jane Welsh Carlyle Quotes

“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.”

Letter to Miss Barnes http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/carlyle/jwclam/lam301.html#LM3-207 (24 August 1859).

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