Why cannot one always do, not only the right thing, but at the right time? Dinah Maria Murlock Craik More Quotes by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik More Quotes From Dinah Maria Murlock Craik O how beautiful is morning! Dinah Maria Murlock Craik army morning beautiful 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik regret men past 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik wickedness gossip silly 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik fashion fighting laughing 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik self children years 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik men heaven people 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik compassion letting-go long There are no judgments so harsh as those of the erring, the inexperienced, and the young. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik erring harsh judgment Alack, this world Dinah Maria Murlock Craik this-world change world Autumn Dinah Maria Murlock Craik autumn gay 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik sorrow heaven believe 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik moon reflection sky Happiness! Can any human being undertake to define it for another? Dinah Maria Murlock Craik human-beings humans happiness 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik fearless bulls thinking 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik selfishness and-love mean Many true words are spoken in jest. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik true-words jest humor 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik self kindness mean 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik risk truth lying 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. Dinah Maria Murlock Craik writing book world To-morrow is ah, whose? Dinah Maria Murlock Craik morrow tomorrow
