Remarks by Joanna Baillie | V2Melody Quotations

“No Christian—no Protestant Christian, regulates, or at least ought to regulate, his faith by any thing but what appears to him to be really taught in Scripture.”

Private judgement of scripture set above added church doctrines · A View of the General Tenor of the New Testament, 1831

“Occupation, Religion and Poetry make a strong fence against the inroads of unavailing grief.”

Work, faith, and verse as a defence against fruitless mourning · Letter quoting and forwarding consolation after Lady Beaumont's return to Coleorton

“Give my love to your mother; love is better than admiration, but I give her both.”

Affection ranked above public homage even for a great actress · Letter to Miss Siddons

“I am unwilling to quit the world and leave them behind me in their unconnected state, or to leave the trouble of collecting and correcting them to another.”

A practical farewell to her own scattered verses · Preface, Fugitive Verses, 1840

“This book then, does not hold out the allurement of novelty.”

She gathered scattered songs as old acquaintances rather than new wares · Preface, Fugitive Verses, 1840

“Formed as we are with these sympathetick propensities in regard to our own species, it is not at all wonderful that theatrical exhibition has become the grand and favourite amusement of every nation into which it has been introduced.”

Theatre exists, she says, because we cannot help watching one another · Introductory Discourse, A Series of Plays, 1798

“May God support both you and me, and give us comfort and consolation when it is most wanted.”

A plain blessing exchanged between two ageing friends · Letter to Mary Berry, 1837

“I have great cause for humble thankfulness, and I am thankful.”

Gratitude rather than regret at the close of a long working life · Letter to Mary Berry, 1837

“As for myself, I do not wish to be one year younger than I am, and have no desire, were it possible, to begin life again, even under the most honourable circumstances.”

Late-life contentment without a wish to rewind the clock · Letter to Mary Berry, 1837

“I have endeavoured to set in array, for the use of common readers, all the texts of the New Testament bearing upon a certain point of faith, leaving every one to judge for himself from the general tenor of the whole.”

A laywoman's insistence that belief should rest on scripture, not party · Letter defending A View of the General Tenor of the New Testament

“I consider myself as less of a sectarian than almost any one whom I am acquainted with.”

She presented scripture texts and left readers to judge for themselves · Letter on her New Testament pamphlet, c. 1831

“A plain statement of their miserable lot in prose, accompanied with a simple, reasonable plan for sweeping chimneys without them, was far better strategically.”

Practical reform, she thought, should not look like a poet's fancy · Letter to James Montgomery, 5 February 1824

“Sending a poem is just the very way to have the whole matter considered by the sober pot-boilers over the whole kingdom as a fanciful and visionary thing.”

She preferred a plain prose plan to verse when campaigning for chimney-sweeps · Letter to James Montgomery, 5 February 1824

“I have to thank it, for that kind of reception which is best calculated to make a work go on well—praise mixed with a considerable portion of censure.”

She valued mixed criticism as healthier than unmixed praise · To the Reader, Plays on the Passions, volume two, 1802

“I have wished to leave behind me in the world a few plays, some of which might have a chance of continuing to be acted even in our canvas theatres and barns.”

She hoped even humble playhouses might keep her work alive in performance · Prefatory address, as commonly cited from her defence of stage plays

“It has been and still is, my strongest desire to add a few pieces to the stock of what may be called our national or permanently acting plays.”

A lifelong claim that her dramas were written for the stage, not the closet · To the Reader, Miscellaneous Plays, 1804

“There is, perhaps, no employment which the human mind will with so much avidity pursue, as the discovery of concealed passion, as the tracing the varieties and progress of a perturbed soul.”

She names hidden passion as the true subject of tragedy · Introductory Discourse, A Series of Plays, 1798

“It is our best and most powerful instructor.”

Sympathetic curiosity is treated as a moral school rather than idle gazing · Introductory Discourse, A Series of Plays, 1798

“In examining others we know ourselves.”

Self-knowledge, she argues, comes through watching the passions of other people · Introductory Discourse, A Series of Plays, 1798

“From that strong sympathy which most creatures, but the human above all, feel for others of their kind, nothing has become so much an object of man's curiosity as man himself.”

Her central claim that we watch one another because fellow-feeling and curiosity are native to us · Introductory Discourse, A Series of Plays, 1798

“The mind of man is the great object of dramatic imitation.”

Presenting human nature and its passions as the central subject of drama · Preface to A Series of Plays

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