Dinah Maria Craik (1826–87,) née Mulock, was a prolific English author of novels, poems, children’s books, fairy-tales, essays, and short stories. In the late 19th-century, her books were more widely read than those of any other novelist except Charles Dickens were.
Born in Hartshill, near Stoke-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, Craik settled in London at the age of 20 and went on to publish The Ogilvies (1849,) Olive (1850,) The Head of the Family (1851,) and Agatha’s Husband (1853.)
Craik’s best-known novel is John Halifax, Gentleman (1857,) an account of a middle-class family in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. It was often read by children and was very popular in both England and America. Her short stories were collected as Avillion (1853,) and Collected Poems appeared in 1881. She also wrote essays, children’s stories, and fairytales.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Dinah Craik
Coming away from a modern play, as out of the reeking, noxious theatre where it is acted, is, to many, like quitting a moral hell—a very ingenious, elegant, amusing hell, but nevertheless as black as Avernus, and into which the descent is quite as easy.
—Dinah Craik
Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.
—Dinah Craik
Topics: Beliefs, Belief
Oh my son’s my son till he gets him a wife, but my daughter’s my daughter all her life.
—Dinah Craik
Topics: Family
Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
—Dinah Craik
The deepest tenderness a woman can show to a man, is to help him to do his duty.
—Dinah Craik
For every evil there is a remedy, or there is not; if there is one I try to find it; and if there is not, I never mind it.
—Dinah Craik
What a death in life it must be—an existence whose sole aim is good eating and drinking, splendid houses and elegant clothes! Not that these things are bad in moderation—and with something higher beyond. But with nothing beyond?
—Dinah Craik
Topics: Life
The best woman has always somewhat of a man’s strength; and the noblest man of a woman’s gentleness.
—Dinah Craik
There should be one theatre where we might take our young daughters without tainting their fresh souls by images of wickedness, or worse, putting it in such pleasant and pathetic shape that they mistake it for virtue.
—Dinah Craik
Silence sweeter is than speech.
—Dinah Craik
Topics: Silence, Speech
The only way to meet affliction is to pass through it solemnly, slowly, with humility and faith, as the Israelites passed through the sea. Then its very waves of misery will divide, and become to us a wall, on the right side and on the left, until the gulf narrows before our eyes, and we land safe on the opposite shore.
—Dinah Craik
When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.
—Dinah Craik
Topics: Charity
Autumn to winter, winter to spring,
Spring into summer, summer into fall—
So rolls the changing year, and so we change;
Motion so swift, we know not that we move.
—Dinah Craik
Topics: Change
There is a vast difference in one’s respect for the man who has made himself, and the man who has only made his money.
—Dinah Craik
Topics: Money
A rich man, of cultivated tastes, with every right to gratify them, knowing enough of sorrow to humble his heart toward God, and soften it toward his neighbor—gifted with not only the power but will to do good, and having lived long enough to reap the fruits of an honorable youth in a calm old age—such a man, in spite of his riches, is not unlikely to enter the kingdom of heaven.
—Dinah Craik
Topics: Riches
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