Edward Carpenter Quotations

When he was twenty-three or twenty-four my father began to learn German and read philosophy in his spare hours, which did not look as though he were destined to remain long on board ship!

My ideas had been taking a socialistic shape for many years; but they were lacking in definite outline.

Where there had been only jeers or taunts at first, crowds come to listen with serious and sympathetic men.

The other thing that happened in 1883 was my reading of Thoreau's Walden.

For so, surely you will cast a light of gladness upon his onward journey, and contribute your part towards the building of that kingdom of love which links our earth to heaven.

IN April 1882 my father died; and I was at once whirled out of my land of dreams into a very different sphere.

Do not think too much of the dead husk of your friend, or mourn too much over it, but send your thoughts out towards the real soul or self which has escaped — to reach it. For so, surely you will cast a light of gladness upon his onward journey, and contribute your part towards the building of that kingdom of love which links our earth to heaven.

The general fact of surplus value, namely that the workmen does not get the full value of his labours, and that he is taken advantage of by the capitalist, is obvious.

Great success in examinations does naturally not as a rule go with originality of thought.

I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don't know exactly why I didn't.

With my somewhat vague aspiring mind, to be imprisoned in the rude details of a most material life was often irksome.

I was in the Square at the time. The crowd was a most good-humoured, easy going, smiling crowd; but presently it was transformed. A regiment of mounted police came cantering up.

Whatever the practical value of the Walden experiment may be, there is no question that the book is one of the most vital and pithy ever written.

We lived within two hundred yards of the sea, and its voice was in our ears night and day.

I should like these few words to be read over the grave when my body is placed in the earth; for though it is possible I may be present and conscious of what is going on, I shall not be able to communicate.

IT is curious that, with my somewhat antinomian tendencies, I should have gone to Trinity Hall - which was, and is, before all a Law College - and should thus have been thrown into close touch with the legal element in life.

Early in 1888 one or two of us got together to establish our own Sheffield Socialist Society.

Making a choice is like backing a horse-in a hundred years, they may decide you picked wrongly.

Early in 1883, as I have said, I gave my first lecture on social questions, and from that time forward I spoke on these subjects.

In the summer of '84 I went again to the United States, my chief object again being to see Whitman - though I had also friends to visit.

What is the good of life if its chief element, and that which must always be its chief element, is odious? No, the only true economy is to arrange so that your daily labor shall be itself a joy.

Motherhood is, after all, woman's great and incomparable work.

Anyone who realises what Love is, the dedication of the heart, so profound, so absorbing, so mysterious, so imperative, and always just in the noblest natures so strong, cannot fail to see how difficult, how tragic even, must often be the fate of those whose deepest feelings are destined from the earliest days to be a riddle and a stumbling-block, unexplained to themselves, passed over in silence by others.

I saw deep in the eyes of the animals, the human soul look out upon me.

Making a choice is like backing a horse - in a hundred years, they may decide you picked wrongly.

Remember, the serpent is still living in the Garden of Eden. Only the heterosexual couple was expelled.

Let your mind be quiet, realizing the beauty of the world, and the immense boundless treasures that it holds.