The Midwife's Revolt Quotes

“You must learn to love yourself and your own company. As for others, there is no guarantee. You have only yourself for certain, until the last breath.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“it is more honorable to be kind even if one is not repaid with kindness.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“Between pain and harm, my mother taught me, lay a vast moral divide. Sometimes one must cause pain to avoid harm.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“FOR THE CAKE: Beat together eight soup spoons butter with one cup sugar until fluffy. Mix in two eggs and three soup spoons juice from an orange. In a small bowl, blend one and two-thirds cups flour, a teaspoon baking powder, and half a teaspoon salt. Add dry to wet mixture along with one cup buttermilk. Blend well. Stir in one cup raisins, half a cup chopped walnuts, and one soup spoon finely grated orange peel. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan and bake forty-five to fifty minutes. Cool before icing.   FOR THE ICING: Stir two soup spoons juice of orange and two cups powdered sugar together until the sugar dissolves completely and the icing is smooth. The icing should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. If it is too thick, add more liquid; if too thin, add a little sugar.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“But the mind must have the story and, missing the truth, will piece together a fiction from ragged scraps.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“give every man thine ear but few thy voice.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. —Abigail Adams to John Adams March 31, 1776”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“IT IS NOT a Christian sentiment to wish for death. But I was twenty-one and knew not how to suffer.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“I believe that we are called upon to do things in this life that we would not do in an ideal life. I believe that to reach that ideal, one must be prepared to sacrifice.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“He was large and lusty and cried at once. I cleaned him quickly and”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“each man or woman must judge himself on this earth, and I wished not to look back years hence and find myself lacking.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“Furthermore, I now believe that loneliness of an intimate nature warps the mind and has us seeing phantom qualities in a man, not the truth about him.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“The only certainty in choosing to act is that there will be consequences.” Martha was right. The notion”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“Oh, she was made of inhuman stuff!”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“frowned at the thought that one’s imagination is never strong enough to plan as well as one ought.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“An excellent idea.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“Thinking what thoughts, may I ask?” “That I must stop my self-pity and get on with the godly task of helping others.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“I told myself that I must stop sighing the lack of many a thing I sought.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“LIZZIE’S SPOILS-OF-WAR ORANGE CAKE FOR THE CAKE: Beat together eight soup spoons butter with one cup sugar until fluffy. Mix in two eggs and three soup spoons juice from an orange. In a small bowl, blend one and two-thirds cups flour, a teaspoon baking powder, and half a teaspoon salt. Add dry to wet mixture along with one cup buttermilk. Blend well. Stir in one cup raisins, half a cup chopped walnuts, and one soup spoon finely grated orange peel. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan and bake forty-five to fifty minutes. Cool before icing. FOR THE ICING: Stir two soup spoons juice of orange and two cups powdered sugar together until the sugar dissolves completely and the icing is smooth. The icing should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. If it is too thick, add more liquid; if too thin, add a little sugar.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“How can one know good and evil when events nest themselves one within the other, like hollow wooden dolls?”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“Like my beloved Star, he had an instinct for me.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“No, Eliza was like a splendid madwoman—she raged, she shouted, she even cursed. Martha and I encouraged her to such an extent that anyone overhearing us might have thought we performed an exorcism.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“The thing is, philosophical consolation is all I have. I can’t change my state. I can only change my relation to it.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“my father always told me that sarcasm was for second-rate minds.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“Though people will say I was brave to do so, I will say it was the path I took back to life, for nothing eases one’s own pain more than to ease that of others.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“It is very easy to judge a thing from hindsight”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“There is no more despicable emotion on earth than envy, yet none so common to the human heart.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“God had seen fit to place two kinds of people on this earth: those who, though they had nothing, would give you half of that nothing; and those who would give nothing, though they had all the riches in the world. And while it is blasphemy to say, I believe that no amount of piety or churchgoing changed one kind of human being into the other. “He”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt

“broke and at last I was able to rise. It was frightfully cold that morning. The sky was dark. Steel-gray ocean waves crashed pitilessly upon the shore; my breath enshrouded me.”
― Jodi Daynard, The Midwife's Revolt