Home > Author > Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman QUOTES

Charlotte Perkins Gilman QUOTES

1 " Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman

2 " As for mother Eve - I wasn't there and can't deny the story, but I will say this. If she brought evil into the world, we men have had the lion's share of keeping it going ever since. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings

3 " 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. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , If I Were a Man

4 " There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , Women and Economics

5 " it is only in social relations that we are human...to be human women must share in the totality of humanity's common life. Women, forced to lead restricted lives, retard all human progress. Growth of organism, the individual or social body requires use of all of our powers in four areas: physical, intellectual, spiritual and social "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , Herland

6 " Here she comes, running, out of prison and off the pedestal: chains off, crown off, halo off, just a live woman. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman

7 " 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. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

8 " Its time we woke up,” pursued Gerald, still inwardly urged to unfamiliar speech. “Women are pretty much people, seems to me. I know they dress like fools - but who’s to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs, and design their crazy fashions, and what’s more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common-sense clothes - and shoes - which of us wants to dance with her? "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

9 " the human mind was no better than in its earliest period of savagery, only better informed "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , Herland

10 " You see, they were Mothers, not in our sense of helpless involuntary fecundity, forced to fill and overfill the land, every land, and then see their children suffer, sin, and die, fighting horribly with one another; but in the sense of Conscious Makers of People. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman

11 " And woman should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman

12 " [The Yellow Wallpaper] was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman

13 " I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very ' bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so:... "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , The Yellow Wall-Paper

14 " John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , The Yellow Wall-Paper

15 " I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , The Yellow Wall-Paper

16 " Now why should that man have fainted? But he did,and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time! "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , The Yellow Wall-Paper

17 " But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way — it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , The Yellow Wall-Paper

18 " Through it [literature] we know the past, govern the present, and influence the future. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , The Man-Made World

19 " Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able, - to dress and entertain, and order things "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , The Yellow Wall-Paper

20 " John says I musn't lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.
Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.
But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.
It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose.
And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.
He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well. "

― Charlotte Perkins Gilman , The Yellow Wall-Paper