9 Dinah Craik Quotes on Life

Dinah Craik quotes on life

2. The irrevocable Hand That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut The portals of our earthly destinies; We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors Close after us, for ever. Pause, my soul, On these strange words - for ever - whose large sound Breaks flood-like, drowning all the petty noise Our human moans make on the shores of Time. O Thou that openest, and no man shuts; That shut'st, and no man opens - Thee we wait!

9. Drink, my jolly lads, drink with discerning, Wedlock's a lane where there is no turning; Never was owl more blind than a lover, Drink and be merry, lads, half seas over.

12. To-morrow is, ah, whose?

16. 'I am but as others: I am but what I was born to be.' 'Do you recognize what you were born to be? Not only a nobleman, but a gentleman; not only a gentleman, but a man - man, made in the image of God. How can you, how dare you, give the lie to your Creator?' 'What has He given me? What have I to thank Him for?' 'First, manhood; the manhood His Son disdained not to wear; worldly gifts, such as rank, riches, influence, things which others have to spend half an existence in earning; life in its best prime, with much of youth yet remaining - with grief endured, wisdom learnt, experience won. Would to Heaven, that by any poor word of mine I could make you feel all that you are - all that you might be!' A gleam, bright as a boy's hope, wild as a boy's daring, flashed from those listless eyes - then faded. 'You mean, Mr. Halifax, what I might have been. Now it is too late.' '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!''

27. 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.

28. Happiness! Can any human being undertake to define it for another? ~ Ch. 10

35. It is a curious truth - and yet a truth forced upon us by daily observation - that it is not the women who have suffered most who are the unhappy women. A state of permanent unhappiness - not the morbid, half-cherished melancholy of youth, which generally wears off with wiser years, but that settled, incurable discontent and dissatisfaction with all things and all people, which we see in some women, is, with very rare exceptions, at once the index and the exponent of a thoroughly selfish character. ~ Ch. 10

43. A finished life - a life which has made the best of all the materials granted to it, and through which, be its web dark or bright, its pattern clear or clouded, can now be traced plainly the hand of the Great Designer; surely this is worth living for? And though at its end it may be somewhat lonely; though a servant's and not a daughter's arm may guide the failing step; though most likely it will be strangers only who come about the dying bed, close the eyes that no husband ever kissed, and draw the shroud kindly over the poor withered breast where no child's head has ever lain; still, such a life is not to be pitied, for it is a completed life. It has fulfilled its appointed course, and returns to the Giver of all breath, pure as He gave it. Nor will He forget it when He counteth up His jewels. ~ Ch 12

47. Nothing but a speck we seem In the waste of waters round, Floating, floating like a dream, - Outward bound.