Jane Welsh Carlyle

Jane Welsh Carlyle (January 14 1801 – April 21 1866) was a Scottish writer. She did not publish any work in her lifetime, but she was widely seen as an extraordinary letter writer. Virginia Woolf called her one of the "great letter writers", and Elizabeth Hardwick described her work as a "private writing career". She was the wife of Thomas Carlyle .

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.

Quotes

• I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for.
  • Letter to Thomas Carlyle (7 May 1822).

• 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!"
  • Letter to Thomas Carlyle (20 May 1824]).

• 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.
  • Letter to Thomas Carlyle (January 1825).

• 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 (15 June 1835).

• Oh Lord! If you but knew what a brimstone of a creature I am behind all this beautiful amiability!
  • Letter to Eliza Stodart (29 February 1836).

• 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.
  • Letter to John Sterling (5 August 1845).

• 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).

• The surest way to get a thing in this life is to be prepared for doing without it, to the exclusion even of hope.
  • Journal entry (August 1849).

• When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favour.
  • Journal entry (25 November 1855).

• 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.
  • Journal entry (16 July 1858).

• 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 (24 August 1859).

Quotes about Carlyle

• Jenny kissed me when we met,
  Jumping from the chair she sat in;
  Time, you thief, who love to get
  Sweets into your list, put that in.
  Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
  Say that health and wealth have missed me;
  Say I'm growing old, but add
  Jenny kissed me.
  • Leigh Hunt, in "Jenny Kissed Me", in The Monthly Chronicle (November 1838).

External links

• Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle