Jane Welsh Carlyle

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."