Dinah Maria Murlock Craik quotes:

God rest ye, little children; let nothing you afright, For Jesus Christ, your Saviour, was born this happy night; Along the hills of Galilee the white blocks sleeping lay, When Christ, the child of Nazareth, was born on Christmas day.

Now, I have nothing to say against uncles in general. They are usually very excellent people, and very convenient to little boys and girls.

our right or wrong use of money is the utmost test of character, as well as the root of happiness or misery, throughout our whole lives.

Wedlock's a lane where there is no turning.

O, the mulberry-tree is of trees the queen! Bare long after the rest are green; But as time steals onwards, while none perceives Slowly she clothes herself with leaves.

Nothing but a speck we seem In the waste of waters round, Floating, floating like a dream, Outward bound.

Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor to measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together.

O blest one hour like this! to rise And see grief's shadows backward roll; While bursts on unaccustomed eyes The glad Aurora of the soul.

A person who is careless about money is careless about everything, and untrustworthy in everything.

Keep what is worth keeping and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

according to the old joke, married people are often like little boys bathing, who cry with chattering teeth to the boys on the shore, 'Do come in, it's so warm' - it is not always warm.

Every man for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost.

Many true words are spoken in jest.

O how beautiful is morning! How the sunbeams strike the daisies And the kingcups fill the meadow Like a golden-shielded army Marching to the uplands fair.

Down in the deep, up in the sky , I see them always, far or nigh, And I shall see them till I die The old familiar faces.

We never know through what Divine mysteries of compensation the great Father of the universe may be carrying out His sublime plan; but those three words, "God is love " ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things.

O the green things growing, the green things growing, The faint sweet smell of the green things growing! I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve, Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing.

A perfect marriage is as rare as a perfect love. Could it be otherwise, when both men and women are so imperfect? Could aught else be expected? Yet all do expect it.

... what a fatal thing in pictures, books, or human lives, is a lack of proportion.

But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

Human life is so full of pain, that once past the youthful delusion that a sad countenance is interesting, and an incurable woe the most delightful thing possible, the mind instinctively turns where it can get rest, and cheer and sunshine. And the friend who can bring to it the largest portion of these is, of a natural necessity, the most useful, the most welcome, and the most dear.

Mine to the core of the heart, my beauty! Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty: Love given willingly, full and free, Love for love's sake - as mine to thee. Duty's a slave that keeps the keys, But Love, the master, goes in and out Of his goodly chambers with song and shout, Just as he please - just as he please.

Money is meant not for hoarding, but for using; the aim of life should be to use it in the right way - to spend as much as we can lawfully spend, both upon ourselves and others. And sometimes it is better to do this in our lifetime, when we can see that it is well spent, than to leave it to the chance spending of those that come after us.

Those whose own light is quenched are often the light-bringers.

This is practically the language used to fallen women, and chiefly by their own sex: "God may forgive you, but we never can!" a declaration which, however common, in spirit if not in substance, is, when one comes to analyse it, unparalleled in its arrogance of blasphemy. That for a single offence, however grave, a whole life should be blasted, is a doctrine repugnant even to Nature's own dealings in the visible world.

Though it is folly to suppose that happiness is a matter of volition, and that we can make ourselves content and cheerful whenever we choose a theory that many poor hypochondriacs are taunted with till they are nigh driven mad yet, on the other hand, no sane mind is ever left without the power of self-discipline and self-control in a measure, which measure increases in proportion as it is exercised.

Gossip, public, private, social to fight against it either by word or pen seems, after all, like fighting with shadows. Everybody laughs at it, protests against it, blames and despises it; yet everybody does it, or at least encourages others in it: quite innocently, unconsciously, in such a small, harmless fashion yet we do it. We must talk about something, and it is not all of us who can find a rational topic of conversation, or discuss it when found.

The irrevocable Hand That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut The portals of our earthly destinies ; We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors Close after us, for ever. Pause, my soul , On these strange words for ever whose large sound Breaks flood-like, drowning all the petty noise Our human moans make on the shores of Time . O Thou that openest, and no man shuts; That shut'st, and no man opens Thee we wait!

... it does not do to tell great people anything unpleasant.

There are no judgments so harsh as those of the erring, the inexperienced, and the young.

Alack, this world Is full of change, change, change--nothing but change!

Autumn Into earth's lap does throw Brown apples gay in a game of play, As the equinoctials blow.

There is no sorrow under heaven which is, or ought to be, endless. To believe or to make it so, is an insult to Heaven itself.

I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water. We can feel it interpenetrating our whole being with warmth and strength; we can see it in a pale reflection shining elsewhere; or in its total absence, we, walking in darkness, learn to appreciate what it is by what it is not.

About the greatest virtue a friend can have, is to be able to hold her tongue; and through this, like all virtues carried to extremity, may grow into a fault, and do great harm, still, it never can do so much harm as that horrible laxity and profligacy of speech which is a the root of half the quarrels, cruelties, and injustices of the world.

we are so scornful when we are young!

If I had to write a book, I could not find anything in the world worth saying - as is indeed the case with many voluminous authors.

there is nothing so absolute as the tyranny of weakness.

We are all of us very perfect creatures so long as we are not tried.

the worst times come to an end if you can only wait long enough.

When the ship is going down we trouble ourselves little enough about the style of the cabin furniture.

never was there a thoroughly noble nature without some romance in it.

God makes many poets, but he only gives utterance to a few.

A parent, unlike a poet, is not born - he is made.

The wonder is not that some married people are less happy than they hoped to be, but that any married people, out of the honeymoon, or even in it, are ever happy at all.

The man who does his work, any work, conscientiously, must always be in one sense a great man.

Better no marriage, than a marriage short of the best.

Society, in the aggregate, is no fool. It is astonishing what an amount of "eccentricity" it will stand from anybody who takes the bull by the horns, too fearless or too indifferent to think of consequences.

To-morrow is ah, whose?

Ethics, as has been well said, are the finest fruits of humanity, but they are not its roots

The only way to meet affliction is to pass through it solemnly, slowly, with humility and faith, as the Israelites passed through the sea. Then its very ways of misery will divide, and become to us a wall, on the right side and on the left, until the gulf narrows before our eyes and we land safe on the opposite sore.

The irrevocable Hand That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut The portals of our earthly destinies; We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors Close after us, forever.

Silence sweeter is than speech.

It is not work that kills, but "worry."

Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence.

A secret at home is like rocks under tide.

The life of action is nobler than the life of thought.

Sweet April-time-O cruel April-time! Year after year returning, with a brow Of promise, and red lips with longing paled, And backward-hidden hands that clutch the joys Of vanished springs, like flowers.

To accept the inevitable; neither to struggle against it nor murmur at it-this is the great lesson of life.

It is astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it.

An author departs; he does not die.

Our natural and happiest life is when we lose ourselves in the exquisite absorption of home, the delicious retirement of dependent love.

How the sting of poverty, or small means, is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort and not for the comfort of one's neighbors.

With faces like dead lovers who died true.

Not perhaps until later life, until the follies, passions, and selfishness of youth have died out, do we . . . recognize the the inestimable blessing, the responsibility awful as sweet, of possessing or of being a friend.

Autumn to winter, winter into spring, Spring into summer, summer into fall,-- So rolls the changing year, and so we change; Motion so swift, we know not that we move.

What small account The All-living seems to take of this thin flame Which we call life. He sends a moment's blast Out of war's nostrils, and a myriad Of these our puny tapers are blown out Forever.

Action is the parent of results; dormancy, the brooding mother of discontent.

Happiness! Can any human being undertake to define it for another?

One only "right" we have to assert in common with mankind--and that is as much in our hands as theirs--is the right of having something to do.

No virtue ever was founded on a lie. The truth, then, at all risks and costs the truth from the beginning. Make a clean breast to whomsoever you need to make it, and then face the world.

For truly, the greatest of all external blessings is it to be able to lean your heart against another heart, faithful, tender, true, and tried, and record with a thankfulness that years deepen instead of diminishing, "I have got a friend!"

God rest you merry, gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay, For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Was born upon this day, To save us all from Satan's power When we were gone astray. O tidings of comfort and joy! For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Was born on Christmas Day.

The plan of this world is infinite similarity and yet infinite variety.

genius is original, unique; and in whatever form it may develop itself is the greatest gift that can be given to man, the strongest known link between the material life we have and the spiritual life that we can only guess at. Every great poet, painter, or musician - every inventor or man of science, every fine actor or orator, comes to us as the exponent of something diviner than we know. We cannot understand it, but we feel it, and acknowledge it.

It may often be noticed, the less virtuous people are, the more they shrink away from the slightest whiff of the odour of un-sanctity. The good are ever the most charitable, the pure are the most brave.

When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.

Be loving, and you will never want for love; be humble, and you will never want for guiding.

It is the Christmas time: And up and down 'twixt heaven and earth, In glorious grief and solemn mirth, The shining angels climb.

A true test of friendship, to sit or walk with a friend for an hour in perfect silence , without wearying of one another's company.

Why cannot one always do, not only the right thing, but at the right time?

We expect too much from our children. We exact from them a perfection which we are far from carrying out in ourselves; we require of them sacrifices much heavier, comparatively, than those of any grown-up person.

One cannot make oneself, but one can sometimes help a little in the making of somebody else. It is well.

We have not to construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we find it, and make the best of it.

What comfort there is in a cheerful spirit! how the heart leaps up to meet a sunshiny face, a merry tongue, an even temper, and a heart which either naturally, or, what is better, from conscientious principle, has learned to take all things on their bright side, believing that the Giver of life being all-perfect Love, the best offering we can make to Him is to enjoy to the full what He sends of good, and bear what He allows of evil!

It is a curious truth and yet a truth forced upon us by daily observation that it is not the women who have suffered most who are the unhappy women. A state of permanent unhappiness not the morbid, half-cherished melancholy of youth, which generally wears off with wiser years, but that settled, incurable discontent and dissatisfaction with all things and all people, which we see in some women, is, with very rare exceptions, at once the index and the exponent of a thoroughly selfish character.

To have loved and lost, either by that total disenchantment which leaves compassion as the sole substitute for love which can exist no more, or by the slow torment which is obliged to let go day by day all that constitutes the diviner part of love namely, reverence, belief, and trust, yet clings desperately to the only thing left it, a long-suffering apologetic tenderness this lot is probably the hardest any woman can have to bear.

The world! It is a word capable of as diverse interpretations or misinterpretations as the thing itself a thing by various people supposed to belong to heaven, man, or the devil, or alternatively to all three.

Do your neighbour good by all means in your power, moral as well as physical by kindness, by patience, by unflinching resistance against every outward evil by the silent preaching of your own contrary life. But if the only good you can do him is by talking at him, or about him nay, even to him, if it be in a self-satisfied, super-virtuous style such as I earnestly hope the present writer is not doing you had much better leave him alone.

Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people as may be noticed of most young children does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.

There can be there ought to be no medium course; a love-affair is either sober earnest or contemptible folly, if not wickedness: to gossip about it is, in the first instance, intrusive, unkind, or dangerous; in the second, simply silly.

There was never a night that had no morn.

Happiness is not an end it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.

absence ... smothers into decay a rootless fancy but often nourishes the least seed of a true affection into full-flowering love.

Queens you must always be: queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and your sons, queens of higher mystery to the world beyond. . . . But alas, you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest.

Loud wind, strong wind, sweeping o'er the mountains, Fresh wind, free wind, blowing from the sea, Pour forth thy vials like streams from airy mountains, Draughts of life to me.

O, the sweet, sweet twilight just before the time of rest, When the black clouds are driven away, and the stormy winds suppressed.

Unless a woman has a decided pleasure and facility in teaching, an honest knowledge of everything she professes to impart, a liking for children, and, above all, a strong moral sense of her responsibility towards them, for her to attempt to enroll herself in the scholastic order is absolute profanation.

As we sail through life towards death, Bound unto the same port--heaven,-- Friend, what years could us divide?

O, the mulberry-tree is of trees the queen! Bare long after the rest are green; But as the time steals onwards, while none perceives Slowly she clothes herself with leaves-- Hides her fruit under them, hard to find. . . . . But by and by, when the flowers grow few And the fruits are dwindling and small to view-- Out she comes in her matron grace With the purple myriads of her race; Full of plenty from root to crown, Showering plenty her feet adown. While far over head hang gorgeously Large luscious berries of sanguine dye, For the best grows highest, always highest, Upon the mulberry-tree.

Young Dandelion On a hedge-side Said young Dandelion Who'll be my bride? Said young Dandelion With a sweet air, I have my eye on Miss Daisy fair.

A lost love. Deny it who will, ridicule it, treat it as mere imagination and sentiment, the thing is and will be; and women do suffer therefrom, in all its infinite varieties: loss by death, by faithlessness or unworthiness, and by mistaken or unrequited affection.

It is not the smallest use to try to make people good, unless you try at the same time and they feel that you are trying to make them happy. And you rarely can make another happy, unless you are happy yourself.

The present only is a man's possession; the past is gone out of his hand wholly, irrevocably. He may suffer from it, learn from it,--in degree, perhaps, expiate it; but to brood over it is utter madness.