Dinah Craik - Life Quotes

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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.

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

Dinah Craik
Sing away, ay, sing away, Merry little bird, Always gayest of the gay, Though a woodland roundelay You ne'er sung nor heard; Though your life from youth to age Passes in a narrow cage.

Dinah Craik
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.

Dinah Craik
There is no such word as 'too late,' in the wide world — nay, not in the universe. What! shall we, whose atom of time is but a fragment out of an ever-present eternity — shall we, so long as we live, or even at our life's ending, dare to cry out to the Eternal One, 'It is too late!'

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

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

Dinah Craik
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.

Dinah Craik
Lo! all life this truth declares,
Laborare est orare;
And the whole earth rings with prayers.

Dinah Craik
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.

Dinah Craik
They lived a comfortable humdrum life, conscious of no higher existence. Doubtless they were quite happy — and so are oysters!

Dinah Craik
The secret of life is not to do what one likes, but to try to like what one has to do.

Dinah Craik
In speculating on the life to come I think the secret cry of all of us would be, 'Let me remain myself — able to meet and recognize those I love as themselves, else — in plain truth — I would not care for any after-life at all.'

Dinah Craik
This world
Is full of change, change, change, — nothing but change.
Is there not one straw in life's whirling flood
To hold by, as the torrent sweeps us down.

Dinah Craik
Oh my son's my son till he gets a wife,
But my daughter's my daughter all her life.

Dinah Craik
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.

Dinah Craik
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.

Dinah Craik
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 Craik
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!

Dinah Craik
Nevertheless, taking life as a whole, believing that it consists not in what we have, but in our power of enjoying the same; that there are in it things nobler and dearer than ease, plenty, or freedom from care — nay, even than existence itself; surely it is not Quixotism, but common-sense and Christianity, to protest that love is better than outside show, labour than indolence, virtue than mere respectability

Dinah Craik