Quotes by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“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.””

“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.””

“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!””

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

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

“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.””

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

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

“Patriotism, red hot, is compatible with the existence of a neglect of national interests, a dishonesty, a cold indifference to the suffering of millions. Patriotism is largely pride, and very largely combativeness. Patriotism generally has a chip on its shoulder.””

“You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.””

“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.””

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

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

“I learned a lot, when I was a child, from novels and stories, even fairytales have some point to them--the good ones. The thing that impressed me most forcibly was this: the villains went to work with their brains and always accomplished something. To be sure they were "foiled" in the end, but that was by some special interposition of Providence, not by any equal exertion of intellect on the part of the good people. The heroes and middle ones were mostly very stupid. If bad things happened, they practised patience, endurance, resignation, and similar virtues; if good things happened they practised modesty and magnanimity and virtues like that, but it never seemed to occur to any of them to make things move their way. Whatever the villains planned for them to do, they did, like sheep. The same old combinations of circumstances would be worked off on them in book after book--and they always tumbled.It used to worry me as a discord worries a musician. Hadn't they ever read anything? Couldn't they learn anything from what they read--ever? It appeared not. And it seemed to me, even as a very little child, that what we wanted was good people with brains, not just negative, passive, good people, but positive, active ones, who gave their minds to it."A good villain. That's what we need!" I said to myself. "Why don't they write about them? Aren't there ever any?"I never found any in all my beloved story books, or in real life. And gradually, I made up my mind to be one.””