Mary Cholmondeley > Quotes

“Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well.”
― Mary Cholmondeley, Red Pottage

“People, like Sybell, believe one can only sympathize with what one has experienced. That is why they are always saying, 'as a mother,' or 'as a wife.' If that were true the world would have to get on without sympathy, for no two people have the same experience. Only a shallow nature believes that a resemblance in two cups means that they both contain the same wine.”
― Mary Cholmondeley, Red Pottage

“A present of books is always an advantage in the country.”
― Mary Cholmondeley

“The purple clematis and the small lizard-like leaf of the ivy have laid tender hands on all that is left of that stately house of prayer. The pigeons wheel round it, and nest in its niches. The soft, contented murmur of bird praise has replaced the noise of bitter human prayer.”
― Mary Cholmondeley, Red Pottage

“Whatever Ralph advises will be sure to be right," replied Evelyn, with the soft conviction of his infallibility which caused her to be considered by most of Ralph's masculine friends an ideal wife. It is women without reasoning powers of any kind whom the nobler sex should be careful to marry if they wish to be regarded through life in this delightful way by their wives. Men not particularly heroic in themselves, who yet are anxious to pose as heroes in their domestic circle, should remember that the smallest modicum of common-sense on the part of the worshipper will inevitably mar a happiness, the very existence of which depends entirely on a blind unreasoning devotion. In middle life the absence of reason begins perhaps to be felt; but why in youth take thought for such a far-off morrow!
(from: Sir Charles Danvers)”
― Cholmondeley Mary 1859-1925

“Confidences and confessions are too often a means of evasion of justice—a laying of the case for the plaintiff before a judge without allowing the defendant to be present or to call a witness.”
― Mary Cholmondeley, Red Pottage

“I venture to think," he continued, his heavy, lustreless eyes coming to a stand-still upon her, "that though I accept in all reverence the position of woman as the equal of man, as promulgated in The Princess, by our lion-hearted Laureate, nevertheless I advance beyond him in that respect. I hold"—in a voice calculated to impress the whole table—"that woman is man's superior, and that she degrades herself when she endeavors to place herself on an equality with him.”
― Mary Cholmondeley, Red Pottage