Charlotte Perkins Gilman Quotes
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To be surrounded by beautiful things has much influence upon the human creature; to make beautiful things has more.
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We grovel and "worship" and pray to God to do what we ourselves ought to have done a thousand years ago, and can do now, as soon as we choose.
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The people people have for friends Your common sense appall But the people people marry Are the queerest folk of all.
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We all need one another; much and often. Just as every human creature needs a place to be alone in, a sacred, private "home" of his own, so all human creatures need a place to be together in, from the two who can show each other their souls uninterruptedly, to the largest throng that can throb and stir in unison.
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In our steady insistence on proclaiming sex-distinction we have grown to consider most human attributes as masculine attributes, for the simple reason that they were allowed to men and forbidden to women.
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As to ethics, unfortunately, we are still at sea. We never did have any popular base for what little ethics we knew, except the religious theories, and now that our faith is shaken in those theories we cannot account for ethics at all. It is no wonder we behave badly, we are literally ignorant of the laws of ethics, which is the simplest of sciences, the most necessary, the most continuously needed. The childish misconduct of our 'revolted youth' is quite equaled by that of older people, and neither young nor old seem to have any understanding of the reasons why conduct is 'good' or 'bad.
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At any given period in history the ideas of the common mind are found to antedate the facts. The facts of the twentieth century are approached with the ideas, feelings, prejudices of the tenth.
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It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.
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For men obsessed with women's underwear, a course in washing, ironing and mending is recommended.
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We are pushed forward by the social forces, reluctant and stumbling, our faces over our shoulders, clutching at every relic of the past as we are forced along; still adoring whatever is behind us. We insist upon worshipping 'the God of our fathers.' Why not the God of our children? Does eternity only stretch one way?
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The peculiarity of all death-based religions is that their subject-matter is entirely outside of facts. Men could think and think, talk and argue, advance, deny, assert, and controversy, and write innumerable books, without being hampered at any time by any fact.
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To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.
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Shall you complain who feed the world? Who clothe the world? Who house the world? Shall you complain who are the world, Of what the world may do? As from this hour You use your power, The world must follow you!
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If only religion could be brought to take an interest in this earthly future, what a help it would be! ... Think of the appeal to the less spiritual of us, to those who never did get enthusiastic about eternity, or care so tenderly about their own souls, yet who could rise to the thought of improving this world for the children they love, and their children after them.
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Exciting literature after supper is not the best digestive.
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Love grows by service.
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I was climbing up a mountain-path With many things to do, Important business of my own, And other people's too, When I ran against a Prejudice That quite cut off the view.
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I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store.
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Never in all her life had she imagined that this idolized millinery could look, to those who paid for it, like the decorations of an insane monkey.
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all social relations exist and grow in the human mind. That one despot can rule over a million other men rests absolutely on their state of mind. They believe that he does; let them change their minds, and he does not.
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The original necessity for the ceaseless presence of the woman to maintain that altar fire - and it was an altar fire in very truth at one period - has passed with the means of prompt ignition; the matchbox has freed the housewife from that incessant service, but the feeling that women should stay at home is with us yet.
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Until mothers earn their livings, women will not
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Specialization and organization are the basis of human progress.
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Maternal instinct, merely as an instinct, is unworthy of our superstitious reverence.
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The home is a human institution. All human institutions are open to improvement.
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It is not for nothing that a man's best friends sigh when he marries, especially if he is a man of genius.
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The time is approaching when we shall consider it abhorrent to our civilization to allow a human being to die in prolonged agony which we should mercifully end in any other creature.
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We have built into the constitution of the human race the habit and desire of taking, as divorced from its natural precursor and concomitant of making.
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The fact that women in the home have shut themselves away from the thought and life of the world has done much to retard progress.We fill the world with the children of 20th century A.D. fathers and 20th century B.C. mothers.
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The softest, freest, most pliable and changeful living substance is the brain-the hardest and most iron-bound as well.
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