Top 50 Ariel Lawhon Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “As women we are taught that bravery and valor exist in the grand gestures. We believe that kindness is weakness and arrogance is the same as courage. But it is not so. Sometimes restraint proves the mettle of a man’s heart more accurately.”

— Ariel Lawhon

2. “Sieg Heil!” they scream, frantic. Obsessed. Saluting and clapping. Believing every word, receiving every command they’ve just been given. Men. Women. Children. All of them swallowing it whole so they can be corroded from the inside out.”

— Ariel Lawhon

3. “Politicians and children have two speeds: running and asleep.”

— Ariel Lawhon

4. “I would tell him what it felt like to stand in that stadium and watch Jesse Owens beat Adolf Hitler’s best runners to win the gold medal. And then, what it felt like, afterward, to interview the son of black sharecroppers from Alabama knowing that he had just changed the world. I would tell him about standing in the shadow of the Hindenburg as it passed over the field.”

— Ariel Lawhon

5. “Sometimes a bit of compassion and decency is reason enough to do something out of the ordinary.”

— Ariel Lawhon

6. “I am the same but different, and I greet this new reflection with a nod of acceptance. There is metal in my spine and there are fractures in my soul. I resemble Garrow now. I have been changed by war.”

— Ariel Lawhon

7. “This is how the human heart beats, a twisted staccato of love and envy, anger and relief.”

— Ariel Lawhon

8. “Taking a woman by force makes a man no better than the rooster in Tobolsk. It simply makes him an animal.”

— Ariel Lawhon

9. “The thing about lipstick, the reason it’s so powerful, is that it is distracting. Men don’t see the flashes of anger in your eyes or your clenched fists when you wear it. They see a woman, not a warrior, and that gives me the advantage.”

— Ariel Lawhon

10. “Love is a choice. It is the active choosing of good for another person. But like? It is a gift and it cannot be forced.”

— Ariel Lawhon

11. “This, a simple piece of bedding, is the answer. Everyone must sleep, and to do so beneath a warm quilt, tenderly made, is the first thing that helps a house become a home.”

— Ariel Lawhon

12. “I am not God – nor do I desire to be – but, being privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in this town, I have a rather good idea what secrets might be recorded, then later revealed, if more women took up the pen.”

— Ariel Lawhon

13. “Listening is a skill acquired by the doing.”

— Ariel Lawhon

14. “A fox. Tentative, she sets one paw onto the ice. Then another. She hesitates, for she knows how fickle the river can be.”

— Ariel Lawhon

15. “This is how it has been between us for the last few years. I know why, but still, it hurts. The joy of having sons is that they worship their mothers. Until one day, suddenly, they don’t. I am not like you, he realizes. We are different. Then, that boy – once small and sweet – begins the long, hard process of separation, until at last he rips the seam. But the holes where mother and son were once knit together remain.”

— Ariel Lawhon

16. “I do remember how to pray, and I know that God is God regardless of which denominational peg I hang my hat upon.”

— Ariel Lawhon

17. “It rains upon the just and the unjust, love. And we no more deserve this than our friends or neighbors do.”

— Ariel Lawhon

18. “It does not matter that I had two more daughters after burying those three. The loss is still as fresh and painful as though it happened yesterday. When they died, generations died with them.”

— Ariel Lawhon

19. “To name a thing is a proprietary act. It is a commitment. Of ownership or care or loyalty. It means something. With that single word I have declared that this little beast is mine, and that I have a responsibility to protect her.”

— Ariel Lawhon

20. “The act of mothering is not limited to the bearing of children.”

— Ariel Lawhon

21. “And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail, That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male. – Rudyard Kipling, “The Female of the Species.”

— Ariel Lawhon

22. “As I rise from the table, it occurs to me that part of what I feel, watching them, is a sense of betrayal. I carried these children into the world, paid their entrance fee with dues rendered upon my own.”

— Ariel Lawhon

23. “I am a devoted fan of the male species. They are brave, brilliant, offer endless entertainment, are good for moving heavy objects, and make the act of procreation a great deal more enjoyable. I’d hate to see a world in which they did not exist. But sometimes they can be spectacular idiots.”

— Ariel Lawhon

24. “Ephraim squeezes my hand again, but harder this time. “How many worries would you have me carry today, love? Those of a stranger as well?”

— Ariel Lawhon

25. “I peer at him, skeptical. “You’ve been reading Shakespeare again.” He shrugs, then yanks the blade free. “I like the way he delivers an insult.”

— Ariel Lawhon

26. “This is the trouble faced by any woman who sets pen to paper in a busy household. I am never guaranteed the certainty of quiet, much less a solid length of time to chase my thoughts and bind them together. That is the luxury of men with libraries, butlers, and wives. Mothers find a different way to get their work done. Ha! There it is! A glimmer. I grab hold of the tail end of the thought as it skitters by, then chase it so that it won’t evaporate.”

— Ariel Lawhon

27. “I want the world to remember that small acts, done in love, matter every bit as much as the ones that make the newspaper and the history books.”

— Ariel Lawhon

28. “I am not a woman given easily to tears. They’re useless things that serve only to make your voice waver and your cheeks wet.”

— Ariel Lawhon

29. “Like all mothers, I have long since mastered the art of nursing joy at one breast and grief at the other.”

— Ariel Lawhon

30. “There is much that men could learn from nature if we would only listen.”

— Ariel Lawhon

31. “Memory is a wicked thing that warps and twists. But paper and ink receive the truth without emotion, and they read it back without partiality. That, I believe, is why so few women are taught to read and write.”

— Ariel Lawhon

32. “I did not take you for the kind of woman who would punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty.”

— Ariel Lawhon

33. “Though you never think it possible, you can celebrate and grieve in the same breath. It is a holy abomination.”

— Ariel Lawhon

34. “Labor renders every woman a novice. Every time is the first time, and the only expertise comes from those assembled to help.”

— Ariel Lawhon

35. “This is the part no one talks about anymore. Not in civilized company at least. When a war is over, you stop discussing the cost. The reality. The blood-soaked soil or the grave markers or the collateral damage. The ways we kill our enemies in order to claim victory. History is written by the men who live. Not the ones who die. But I’ve heard these stories myself.”

— Ariel Lawhon

36. “Although it is human nature, I suppose.” “Hypocrisy?” “Well, yes. They feel better about themselves whenever anyone else is caught doing the same.”

— Ariel Lawhon

37. “How can the court be certain that you and Mistress Foster have not conspired to wrongly accuse Colonel North?” I swallow a sigh. I will never understand why men think that women work so hard to destroy them. In my experience it is usually the opposite.”

— Ariel Lawhon

38. “Within seconds, I am immersed in a make-believe world of English aristocracy. But it does not escape my attention that, had my own ancestors enjoyed such comfort, I would be living across the sea, and not here in the vast wilds of the new world.”

— Ariel Lawhon

39. “And then I laugh. If anyone had told me two decades ago, when I was buried in small children and endless chores, that one day I would sit at my desk in a warm, quiet house while the snow fell outside and complain of loneliness, I would have slapped them.”

— Ariel Lawhon

40. “She left a medical legacy in this country that is unmatched. And it is all thanks to the diary she kept. Just words on paper, right? Seemingly meaningless.”

— Ariel Lawhon

41. “It’s an unimaginative accusation and one that I am frankly tired of hearing. Witchcraft. As though there is no other explanation for a woman who excels at her work.”

— Ariel Lawhon

42. “Being scarred and being scary are not the same thing.”

— Ariel Lawhon

43. “Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and professor, studied the diary and wrote the definitive biography of a woman who should have vanished from history. If not for one diary and the power of words.”

— Ariel Lawhon

44. “The native people believe that the fox presents itself only in times of great uncertainty. That it acts as a guide.”

— Ariel Lawhon

45. “Martha Ballard is the great-aunt of Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross. She is also the great-great-grandmother of Mary Hobart, one of the first female physicians in the United States.”

— Ariel Lawhon

46. “Only a fool would be upset to find a vein of silver running through his beloved territory.”

— Ariel Lawhon

47. “And then I cry. Mostly for Rebecca and the tiny, unwanted beating heart deep within her womb. But also for myself. And our daughters. And for every other woman who lives, suffers, and dies by the mercurial whims of men.”

— Ariel Lawhon

48. “I have only the children that I have.”

— Ariel Lawhon

49. “One of the greatest skills that I have as a midwife is to sit in silence. I cannot count the number of times that I have wordlessly held a hand as grief explodes in a room. The only antidote to this kind of despair is to create a bulwark of immovable calm. To sit and be. To pray and offer comfort. To watch the shadows cut tracks along the wall as the sun slowly moves across the sky. To say nothing when there are no words that can console.”

— Ariel Lawhon

50. “Terror is a strong thing. It comes upon you instantly and consumes all thought and reason.”

— Ariel Lawhon