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Charlotte Perkins Gilman Quotes
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There are things in that wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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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?
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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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.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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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.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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It would have saved trouble had I remained Perkins from the first, this changing of women's names is a nuisance we are now happily outgrowing.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Until we see what we are, we cannot take steps to become what we should be.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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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
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The first duty of a human is to assume the right functional relationship to society — more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Where young boys plan for what they will achieve and attain, young girls plan for whom they will achieve and attain.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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When the mother of the race is free, we shall have a better world, by the easy right of birth and by the calm, slow, friendly forces of evolution.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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The women who do the most work get the least money, and the women who have the most money do the least work.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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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!
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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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.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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[Warfare is] maleness in its absurdest extremes. Here is to be studied the whole gamut of basic masculinity, from the initial instinct of combat, through every form of glorious ostentation, with the loudest accompaniment of noise.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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It becomes bars! The outside pattern, I mean, and the women behind it is as plain as can be. I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman. By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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There's a whining at the threshold —
There's a scratching at the floor —
To work! To work! In Heaven's name!
The wolf is at the door!
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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The religious need of the human mind remains alive, never more so, but it demands a teaching which can be understood. Slowly an apprehension of the intimate, usable power of God is growing among us, and a growing recognition of the only worth-while application of that power — in the improvement of the world.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Not woman, but the condition of woman, has always been a doorway of evil.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Fine blunderers in ethics we are, so generally conveying to children the basic impression that pleasantness must be wrong, and right doing unpleasant!
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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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.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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What we do modifies us more than what is done to us.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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New York... that unnatural city where every one is an exile, none more so than the American.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb and said, "They all feed one another," and called it good.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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In business life, that is, in its material processes, we eagerly accept the new. In social life, in all our social processes, we piously, valiantly, obdurately, maintain the old.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Quote of the day
Joy is like restless day; but peace divine Like quiet night; Lead me, O Lord, — till perfect Day shall shine Through Peace to Light.
Adelaide Anne Procter
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Creative Commons
Born:
July 3, 1860
Died:
August 17, 1935
(aged 75)
Bio:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform.
Known for:
The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
Herland (1915)
Women and Economics (1898)
With Her in Ourland (1916)
Moving the Mountain (1911)
Most used words:
woman
human
people
women
work
life
social
pattern
death
mind
men
wallpaper
mother
duty
time
Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Wikipedia
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