Elinor Glyn

“ The State is taking the power for good from the individual, and the machine is crushing the man; so it behooves all serious thinkers more than ever to use their logical common sense to supply the place once occupied by the old ideals. Nothing is so arrogant as ignorance—and loud shouting ever concealed an empty pate.
Part of the crude spirit of the Great Unrest of to-day manifests itself by the effort of those beneath to demonstrate in words that they are the equals of those above them. And, pitiful and ridiculous as this is, the spirit arose in good. ”

“ A hundred years ago the telephone would have been considered either as magic or the vapourings of a madman if an individual had tried to explain it. We say that “France is developing a new spirit,” we say “A wave of discontent seems to be passing over such and such a community,” we are thus unconsciously admitting the power of forces beyond the perceptible. Why cannot we instantly grasp, then, what the power of our everyday thought is doing for us, and how careful we should be in its direction to avoid augmenting the current of foolish and harmful ones—because unity is strength. ”

“ If only men could understand that to be kind and courteous to their wives in the home would give them much greater liberty abroad, they would greatly add to the happiness of most marriages. It is her daily life which matters to a woman, because, as a rule, her brain is not developed enough to be looking ahead to the great questions of the day; and to have joy in her home is her earthly paradise.
Nearly all love marriages begin with too much emotion and too little self-control, and so become shipwrecked upon the rocks of satiety and indifference. ”

“ The Great Unrest in its seething is still molten metal, which can be poured into what mould we will.
To call this Great Unrest a sign of decadence and a presage of destruction, would be as fallacious as to say that electricity is an entirely mischievous force. Both are mischievous when undirected, and both are glorious when used for good.
The test of the expansion of man’s soul is the extent of its outlook. The puny spirit sees an hour or two ahead; the more advanced probably conceives plans to benefit himself and his loved ones day by day. The developed soul desires the good of his country. ”

“ It is the duty of every true man and woman at this hour of their country’s day to begin to THINK, to weigh for himself or herself the meanings of the signs of the times, to use their critical faculties, to face facts honestly, unhampered by prudery, convention, or the doctrines of the Church. And then they will see for themselves that the Great Unrest is a force, the direction of which, for good or ill, lies in their own hands. And according to the way they fulfil the responsibility entailed upon them in this matter, they or their children will reap the reward, or pay the price. ”

“ He will know that he must be drawing to himself every chance that science has up till this time of the world’s day been able to invent or discover for the betterment of such a disease as his. He will know that he is giving nature a free hand, and as far as he is able, he is opening every door to the probability that he may grow well. Now, if we admit the power of thought, we must admit it has power to go both these ways. Is it not worth while trying to think good things for ourselves, then, instead of evil ones? ”

“ They solemnly stand there and make vows about an emotion over which they have no more control than they have over the keeping of the wind in the south. They have only control, if they have strong wills, over its demonstration. And then in nine cases out of ten neither thinks for a moment afterwards, of his or her responsibility of trying to make possible the observance of these vows, by keeping alight the flame of love in the other’s heart. A man utterly disillusions a woman and then blames her, not himself, for her ceasing to care for him, and being eventually attracted by some one else! ”

“ Now let us consider what most of us do actually know about this power of thought. We all are aware that no picture can be painted, no machinery invented, before a clear vision of it has been realised in the creator’s brain. Not a single conscious action can be put into motion and force without its having first occurred to the imagination. The painter’s hand and brush would be of no avail undirected by his brain or mind, which has first mentally visualised what it wishes to create in fact. ”

“ Before undertaking to play that most difficult part of wife, every girl ought to ask herself, Does she really care for the man enough to make her use her intelligence to understand him, and to try to keep him loving her? Or if she does not personally care enough for him to trouble about this—will the situation of her husband in the world satisfy her, and make the bondage, unleavened by love, of the care of house, servants, and possible children, worth while? ”

“ It would seem to me that divorce as a means of ridding oneself of one partner merely to be happier with another must surely always be wrong, because it must entail the degradation of conscious personal motive, in the knowledge that one had taken advantage of a law to gain an end, and to help one to break a vow solely for one’s own gratification. The enormous responsibility of so taking fate into their own hands would frighten most people, if they gave themselves time to think—but they do not. ”

“ Broadly speaking, to make any marriage happy each partner ought deliberately to use every atom of his or her intelligence to think out the best method to live in sympathy with the mate, and should not simply be set upon expressing his or her own personality, regardless of the other. Chain any two animals together and watch the result! Nothing will teach what marriage means more effectually. It is only when the two poor beasts are of one mind that their chains do not gall. ”

“ To me it seems that no mother ought to undertake any of the so-called duties of a mother that she is incapable of performing to the advantage of the child, who would be better cared for by employing highly trained service. She should only force herself to do her best in uncongenial tasks if circumstances make it impossible for her to obtain a better nurse or teacher for her infant than she herself could be. She must constantly keep the end in view, so as to stamp out prejudice and out-of-date methods; especially she should guard against making the child suffer for her own fads and experiments. ”

“ Tolerance and common sense should always hold wounded vanity and prejudice in check. How often one sees happy and united old couples who in the meridian of their lives have each looked elsewhere, but have had the good taste and judgment to make no public protest about the matter, and thus have given each other time to regain command of vagrant fancies and return to the fold of convention! ”

“ I must reiterate again that it is wiser to remember that it is civilisation alone (civilisation embracing development of moral sense, and religious sense, and the force of custom) which keeps him from straying whenever he feels inclined, and that all she can do to prevent it is to redouble her own attractions, and to help the women of the future by instilling into her own sons’ minds the idea that, as marriage is an ideal and not a natural state, the man who enters into it must be prepared to school himself to live up to an ideal, and control his vagrant emotions. ”

“ There should not be, and I believe there is not, any law which can prevent the lowest in the land from rising to the highest place—if he is fitted for it. It is the ceaseless cry of the unfit unit for some situation above his capabilities, which is a distressing feature of modern life. But, even in this, the spirit shown in the desire to rise is good; while if he had the will to fit himself for what he aspires to, it would be splendid and great. And these are the men and women who succeed, no matter what avocations they may be engaged in. ”

“ Thus let us now consider the present legal marriage as still being a stable fact, and see how we can make the best of it. In it there are two things which both man and woman forget—or refuse to face—and which are perhaps the chief causes of most unhappiness. Man forgets that his kind words of love and sympathy matter far more to the actual happiness of the woman than any of his deeds: because words fill and satisfy her imagination, which is active whenever she is alone ”

“ To teach the boys a new and higher sense of honour is the only possible way to alter matters, as a grown man is seldom changed. In marriage, both partners must understand that they are undertaking to do a most difficult thing in vowing to live together and love for ever! Whichever cares the most will have to use intelligence to keep the other—and if it is the woman who is unfortunate enough to occupy this position, she generally absolutely sacrifices herself to gratify the man’s smallest wish, and so makes herself cheap. ”

“ An enormous majority of the public are frightened at the very name of a new religion or ethical teaching, and think it wrong even to investigate what it teaches. But the broad-minded are unafraid of any knowledge, and can gain good by knowing about all developments of human thought, provided they approach each point with common sense and without hysteria, dismissing the idea of what we are accustomed to call the supernatural, and realising that everything has a perfectly natural explanation when it can be understood, and it is only our ignorance which makes us shy at it. ”

“ The thing which more than half of humanity seems to forget is the end they have in view! They desire something really ardently, and yet appear incapable of keeping their minds from straying into side issues, which must logically militate against, and probably prevent, their desire’s accomplishment. This is very strange! A woman for instance profoundly desires to retain a man’s love when she sees it is waning—but her wounded vanity causes her to use methods of reproach and recrimination towards him, calculated certainly to defeat her end, and accelerate his revolt. ”

“ The unfortunate thing is, that nearly all writers and talkers and lecturers, who are enthusiasts, and therefore really believe in what they are preaching, have so little common sense.
They carry away their readers or audiences for the moment upon the current of their own divine enthusiasm, but when their utterances come to be measured by the cold light of fact, the logical conclusions are so faulty, that the whole, which contained many thoughts of great and beautiful worth, is dismissed as the ravings of a dreamer, and ceases to have any effect. ”

“ Think of the hours some women spend in painful discipline by going through exercises to keep their figures young and their faces beautiful—the massage! the cures! and the “rests” they take to this end—but who let their waiting time for motherhood be passed in a sort of relaxation of all control—getting into tempers, indulging in nerves, over-smoking, or tiring themselves out with excitement without one thought for the coming little one, except as an inevitable necessity or a shocking nuisance. During this period the wise woman ought to study such matters as heredity. ”

“ It had never struck her intelligence that boys with such heredity in them should have been specially influenced and directed from earliest youth towards ideas of the finest honour and proudest responsibility in keeping unblemished their ancient name; that all the stupidities and follies of gambling should have been pointed out to them; that the certain temptations which are bound to beset the path of those in their position should have been fully explained to them—all this done in a simple, common-sense fashion which would convince their understanding. ”