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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
Jane Welsh Carlyle photo
Jane Welsh Carlyle: 11 quotes1 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.”

Jane Welsh Carlyle

Letter to Thomas Carlyle (28 September 1845).

“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.”

Jane Welsh Carlyle

Journal entry (16 July 1858).

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

Jane Welsh Carlyle

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.”

Jane Welsh Carlyle

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

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

Jane Welsh Carlyle

Letter to Eliza Stodart (29 February 1836).

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

Jane Welsh Carlyle

Journal entry (25 November 1855).

Jane Welsh Carlyle Quotes

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

Jane Welsh Carlyle

Journal entry (August 1849).

“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!"”

Jane Welsh Carlyle

Letter to Thomas Carlyle (20 May 1824]).

“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.”

Jane Welsh Carlyle

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

“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.”

Jane Welsh Carlyle

Letter to John Sterling (5 August 1845).

“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.”

Jane Welsh Carlyle

Letter to Thomas Carlyle (January 1825).

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