45 Inspiring Quotes By Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Utopian Feminist

It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.

  

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

  

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.

Life

  

There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.

Me

  

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.

  

When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.

  

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.

Think

  

This is the woman's century, the first chance for the mother of the world to rise to her full place . . . and the world waits while she powders her nose.

  

I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.

Never , Think

  

In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response.

  

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!

  

To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.

  

A man's honor always seems to want to kill a woman to satisfy it.

  

The first duty of a human being is to assume the right relationship to society -- more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.

Relationship

  

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

Me

  

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

  

It does not do to trust people too much.

  

I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

Life , Never

  

Woman" in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether.

  

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

Past

  

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.

  

They were inconveniently reasonable, these women.

  

To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world we must do something.

  

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.

Life , Like , Never

  

I always liked that Arab saying, 'First tie your camel and then trust in the Lord,

  

(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind

  

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

  

Most men’s eyes, when you look at them critically, are not like that. They may look at you very expressively, but when you look at them, just as features, they are not very nice.

Like

  

John doesn't know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose.

Me , Think

  

Those who too patiently serve as props sometimes underrate the possibilities of the vine.

  

New York - that unnatural city where every one is an exile, none more so than the American

  

It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw - not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.

Like , Me , Think

  

I was madly in love with not so much what was there as with what I supposed to be there.

  

John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him.

  

Woman should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body

  

But only this-that people who are utterly ignorant will believe anything-which you certainly knew before.

  

And there was you - your fair self, always delicately dressed, with white firm fingers sure of touch in delicate true work. I loved you then.

  

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

  

I always lock the door when I creep by daylight.

  

When I see them knit,' Terry said, 'I can almost call them feminine.' 'That doesn't prove anything,' Jeff promptly replied. 'Scotch shepherds knit --always knitting.

  

The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John.

  

It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.

Me

  

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

Time

  

The front pattern DOES move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!

  

Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.

Time