Mary Boykin Chesnut Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

I think this journal will be disadvantageous for me, for I spend the time now like a spider spinning my own entrails.

Mary Boykin Chesnut
Brutal men with unlimited power are the same all over the world

Mary Boykin Chesnut
Oh, if I could put some of my reckless spirit into these discreet cautious lazy men!

Mary Boykin Chesnut
Is the sea drying up? It is going up into mist and coming down on us in this water spout, the rain. It raineth every day, and the weather represents our tearful despair on a large scale.

Mary Boykin Chesnut
Does anybody wonder so many women die? Grief and constant anxiety kill nearly as many women as men die on the battlefield.

Mary Boykin Chesnut
This only I see. Like the patriarchs of old our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody's household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think.

Mary Boykin Chesnut
We are divorced, North from South, because we have hated each other so. If we could only separate politely, and not have a horrid fight for divorce.

Mary Boykin Chesnut
A freshet in the autumn does not compensate for a drought in the spring.

Mary Boykin Chesnut
To think there are men who dare so defile a church, a sacred sanctuary dedicated to God. We have to hold up our skirts and walk tiptoe, so covered is the floor, the aisle and pews, with the dark shower of tobacco juice.

Mary Boykin Chesnut
I do not write often now - not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I see and hear. Why dwell upon it?

Mary Boykin Chesnut
We are scattered, stunned; the remnant of heart left alive is filled with brotherly hate... Whose fault? Everybody blamed somebody else. Only the dead heroes left stiff and stark on the battlefield escape.

Mary Boykin Chesnut
Richmond has fallen - and I have no heart to write about it... They are too many for us. Everythign lost in Richmond, even our archives. Blue-black is our horizon.

Mary Boykin Chesnut
Peace, comfort, quiet, happiness, I have found away from home. Only your own family, those nearest and dearest, can hurt you.

Mary Boykin Chesnut