Jane Welsh Carlyle

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.

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.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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!"

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