Victorian Quotes

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.

A black pendant in the shape of a heart lay in her hand. It was carved with roses and strung onto a velvet cord.

I don't want to earn a living, I want to live.

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, on the 15th October, 1856, so that he is now about twenty-six years of age, but brief as has been his career, it has been full of promise for the future. The son of highly intellectual parents, he has had an exceptional education, has travelled much in wild and remote, through classic lands, and in the course of these journeys has learnt to appreciate the beauties of the old authors, in whose works whilst at college he attained exceptional proficiency. But his naturally enthusiastic temperament teaches him to hope for better in the future than has been achieved in the past, and to see how vast will be the influence of Art and Literature on the coming democracy of Intellect, when education and culture shall have taught men to pride themselves on what they have done, and not alone on the deeds of their ancestors.

Walter Hamilton

It was immediately clear that the book had been undisturbed for a very long time, perhaps even since it had been laid to rest. The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust, a dust composed of smoke and fog particles accumulated before the Clean Air acts.

A.S. Byatt

The great city seemed to weigh upon me, as though it were crushing me under its heap of brick and stone. Gray, drizzly skies, congested streets, the soot-belching boats and barges chugging up and down the Thames, the teeming mass of four millions hastening about the countless activities of daily life in a metropolis, things adventurous, meaningful, spiritual, quotidian, futile, criminal, meaningless and absurd. Amidst this seething stew of humanity, I painted.

Gary Inbinder

Archer tries not to think of his own state of purity, physically unsullied, yet now spiritually beyond redemption, his thoughts plagued by lithe limbs and brilliant blue eyes. Doctor Archer has never really understood women, nor has he ever had time for courtship; this is a sacrifice he has willingly made for his career. He thought - believed - for most of his adult life that his vocation was to tend the sick of mind. Romance was a frivolity, carnal urges something he successfully sublimated, resisting the drive to spoil himself. Now, in the overbearing loneliness of his 4am bed he touches himself in secret, panting and hungry and stunned by shame

John T. Fuller

You know this is wrong."It isn't a question. When he turns, White is still wrapped snug in the counterpane, motionless, just his gaze pursuing the doctor about the room. "I am wrong to do this." The doctor says it as if instructing himself. White says nothing. With a sigh, Archer sits on the edge of the bed, smoothing White's curls back from his forehead. "Do you know what we did last night?" To admit it, to speak out loud, seems in itself a terrible affront. It might be his imagination, but the doctor fancies he sees a slight lowering of black lashes, the tiniest quirk of a shy smile. He says, wearily but not without affection, "No, I don't suppose you do.

John T. Fuller

Hello." The doctor speaks softly, nervously. Mr White doesn't respond, not even the slightest change of expression. Dr Archer has been thinking. Mulling it over in his head, endlessly, driving himself more insane he thinks than any unfortunate in his care, crazy with this longing. He is afraid of spiders, he watches the clouds, he held up two fingers; he is lucid. He came to me of his own free will; he shares these terrible feelings.

John T. Fuller

And here you see me working out, as cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of sharing in the glass a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.

Charles Dickens

My very core clenches and spasms, my hips with a mind of their own, lurch. It is as if I no longer have control of any part of my body. ‘Ugh,’ I continue to groan in relief. And then, slowly, the rush is over and I am able to part my eyelids again. David is still looking at my face, a light sheen of sweat on his brow indicates that his task was not without effort. Finding his gaze too forthright in the currentcircumstances, my eyes move to the arm that still dwells beneath my skirts and thehand that clings viciously to his sleeve. My hand.

Ayana Prende

I would feel much better about this whole affair if you would slap me and get it over with. I know you want to.

Moriah Densley

You have a spine of steel and fire in your eyes, Rosalie. To have such a quality, one must be shaken to the foundation of one’s soul and put back together. I want to know how you emerged from hell made of steel and fire.

Moriah Densley

Dickens must have first heard his famous The law is an ass quote from a woman. And she was damned right, for all the good it did her.

Moriah Densley

I’m going to take Charity to France. I can look after her there. You can go on with your life here, and I won’t be here to … to bother anyone.”He muttered two quiet words.“What?” she asked in bewilderment, inching forward to hea

Lisa Kleypas

Matt is a tortured soul,' Amanda insisted. 'He's Heathcliff and you're Cathy. He's Rochester and you're Jane Eyre. He's-''Darcy and I'm Elizabeth. I get it. And you're wrong.

Robin Brande

An unhappy woman with access to weed killer had to be watched carefully.

James Ruddick

Merkin had used only one drop of the “just soap.” Two drops would have made her Master walk slightly awkwardly. Three drops would have made a Victorian gentleman utter something really lustful, such as “you transfix me quite.

Sorin Suciu

In crime books it's possible to chart forensic technology by how well it has to be explained to a reader. In mid-Victorian crime novels fingerprinting has to be explained because it's new. Nowadays it's part of our world and we can simply assume that knowledge if we write about it.

Sara Sheridan

That August, Elodie Selkirk became the latest lady in Paris to order a coin-operated boy.

Kirsty Logan

What if all those strange and unexplainable bends in history were the result of supernatural interference? At which point I asked myself, what's the weirdest most eccentric historical phenomenon of them all? Answer:the Great British Empire. Clearly, one tiny little island could only conquer half the known world with supernatural aid. Those absurd Victorian manners and ridiculous fashions were obviously dictated by vampires. And, without a doubt, the British army regimental system functions on werewolf pack dynamics.

Gail Carriger

When in 1863 Thomas Huxley coined the phrase 'Man's Place in Nature,' it was to name a short collection of his essays applying to man Darwin's theory of evolution. The Origin of Species had been published only four years before, and the thesis that man was literally a part of nature, rather than an earthy vessel charged with some sublimer stuff, was so novel and so offensive to current metaphysics that it needed the most vigorous defense. Half the civilized world was rudely shocked, the other half skeptically amused.Nearly a century has passed since the Origin shattered the complacency of the Victorian world and initiated what may be called the Darwinian revolution, an upheaval of man's ideas comparable to and probably exceeding in significance the revolution that issued from Copernicus's demonstration that the earth moves around the sun. The theory of evolution was but one of many factors contributing to the destruction of the ancient beliefs; it only toppled over what had already been weakened by centuries of decay, rendered suspect by the assaults of many intellectual disciplines; but it marked the beginning of the end of the era of faith.

Homer W. Smith

I should never make anything of a fisherman. I had not got sufficient imagination

Jerome K. Jerome

It is nine o'clock, and London has breakfasted. Some unconsidered tens of thousands have, it is true, already enjoyed with what appetite they might their pre-prandial meal; the upper fifty thousand, again, have not yet left their luxurious couches, and will not breakfast till ten, eleven o'clock, noon; nay, there shall be sundry listless, languid members of fast military clubs, dwellers among the tents of Jermyn Street, and the high-priced second floors of Little Ryder Street, St. James's, upon whom one, two, and three o'clock in the afternoon shall be but as dawn, and whose broiled bones and devilled kidneys shall scarcely be laid on the damask breakfast-cloth before Sol is red in the western horizon. I wish that, in this age so enamoured of statistical information, when we must needs know how many loads of manure go to every acre of turnip-field, and how many jail-birds are thrust into the black hole per mensem for fracturing their pannikins, or tearing their convict jackets, that some M'Culloch or Caird would tabulate for me the amount of provisions, solid and liquid, consumed at the breakfasts of London every morning. I want to know how many thousand eggs are daily chipped, how many of those embryo chickens are poached, and how many fried; how many tons of quartern loaves are cut up to make bread-and-butter, thick and thin; how many porkers have been sacrificed to provide the bacon rashers, fat and streaky ; what rivers have been drained, what fuel consumed, what mounds of salt employed, what volumes of smoke emitted, to catch and cure the finny haddocks and the Yarmouth bloaters, that grace our morning repast. Say, too, Crosse and Blackwell, what multitudinous demands are matutinally made on thee for pots of anchovy paste and preserved tongue, covered with that circular layer - abominable disc! - of oleaginous nastiness, apparently composed of rancid pomatum, but technically known as clarified butter, and yet not so nasty as that adipose horror that surrounds the truffle bedecked pate de foie gras. Say, Elizabeth Lazenby, how many hundred bottles of thy sauce (none of which are genuine unless signed by thee) are in request to give a relish to cold meat, game, and fish. Mysteries upon mysteries are there connected with nine o'clock breakfasts.

George Augustus Sala

The world of shadows and superstition that was Victorian England, so well depicted in this 1871 tale, was unique. While the foundations of so much of our present knowledge of subjects like medicine, public health, electricity, chemistry and agriculture, were being, if not laid, at least mapped out, people could still believe in the existence of devils and demons. And why not? A good ghost story is pure entertainment. It was not until well into the twentieth century that ghost stories began to have a deeper significance and to become allegorical; in fact, to lose their charm. No mental effort is required to read 'The Weird Woman', no seeking for hidden meanings; there are no complexities of plot, no allegory on the state of the world. And so it should be. At what other point in literary history could a man, standing over the body of his fiancee, say such a line as this: 'Speak, hound! Or, by heaven, this night shall witness two murders instead of one!'Those were the days.(introduction to "The Weird Woman")

Hugh Lamb

the whole of Victorian literature done up in grey paper & neatly tied with string

Virginia Woolf

The physical shape of Mollies paralyses and contortions fit the pattern of late-nineteenth-century hysteria as well — in particular the phases of "grand hysteria" described by Jean-Martin Charcot, a French physician who became world-famous in the 1870s and 1880s for his studies of hysterics...""The hooplike spasm Mollie experienced sounds uncannily like what Charcot considered the ultimate grand movement, the arc de de cercle (also called arc-en-ciel), in which the patient arched her back, balancing on her heels and the top of her head...""One of his star patients, known to her audiences only as Louise, was a specialist in the arc de cercle — and had a background and hysterical manifestations quite similar to Mollie's. A small-town girl who made her way to Paris in her teens, Louise had had a disrupted childhood, replete with abandonment and sexual abuse.She entered Salpetriere in 1875, where while under Charcot's care she experienced partial paralysis and complete loss of sensation over the right side of her body, as well as a decrease in hearing, smell, taste, and vision. She had frequent violent, dramatic hysterical fits, alternating with hallucinations and trancelike phases during which she would "see" her mother and other people she knew standing before her (this symptom would manifest itself in Mollie). Although critics, at the time and since, have decried the sometime circus atmosphere of Charcot's lectures, and claimed that he, inadvertently or not, trained his patients how to be hysterical, he remains a key figure in understanding nineteenth-century hysteria.

Michelle Stacey

He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a Cretan-a system of ethics above all others calculated to win popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society.

Thomas Hardy

It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides. But the understood incentive on the woman's part was wanting here. Besides, Bathsheba's position as absolute mistress of a farm and house was a novel one, and the novelty had not yet begun to wear off.

Thomas Hardy

Enlarged sympathy with children was one of the chief contributions made by the Victorian English to real civilization.

George Macaulay Trevelyan

There is enough conformity in the world Lord MacCaulay. I doubt that mine, or lack of it, will send the planet from its axis. Meanwhile, my heart does not soar for the riches you set before me. Perhaps one day, I may feel differently. For now, I wish to taste that which most women do not.”Mademoiselle Noire - The Gentlemen's Club

Emmanuelle de Maupassant

Give me the Black Death over a Victorian prude any day. At least the dying screw like it's their last day on earth.

R.E. Vance

Resting my head on the high-backed chair, I silently marvel at emotion so strong itcan quite literally chase away all reason and good sense. It is something I have neverexperienced. I pity Frances for being victim to such devastating passions. But, if I amhonest, a small part of me envies her, for she possesses something that I should: desirefor my husband. Moreover, she knows what it is to feel alive.

Ayana Prende

Some ghosts are so quiet you would hardly know they were there.

Bernie Mcgill

He is only fifteen! Does she really think he is prepared for marriage, especially with his intellectual range of a teacup?

Erica Sehyun Song

Go find your own hiding spot!” I hissed. “The seat is not wide enough to hold me and that whale you call a nightgown.” Also, we were better off if whoever was coming caught one of us – and by one of us, I meant Rose.

Erica Sehyun Song

Lucille, please make them go away!” she moaned, her voice muffled.t“Do you think I am a divine being sent from the celestial realm to guard you from the harsh punishment of rousing from your slumber?” t“Is that a yes?”t“I am surrounded by idiots.

Erica Sehyun Song

Sunlight streamed in a steady flow, casting flecks of gold onto the floor, bathing my skin. I inhaled deeply. Already, the air inside my bedroom had been perfumed with nature. A breeze whispered softly and breathed carefully onto my skin.

Erica Sehyun Song

But what if Oscar—”t“Breathes fire and threatens to cook you over a grill?”t“I was thinking what if he gets mad, but I think your way works as well.”t“Then you shall make for a tasty meal.

Erica Sehyun Song

All the carriages filed out in single file but in a fashion that seemed to mean that they were competing against each other. The only sound that could be heard for a while was the pounding of the horses’ hooves and the squeal and groan of the wheels against the road. Their hooves kicked up dirt, creating a storm of dust.tOnce the miniature storm and the sound of galloping horses subsided, I could only see one last person. He glared up at me and mouthed, “Next time.” Christopher dug his boots into Dawn’s muscled flank. She reared up and broke into a gallop through the sparse forest, heading for escape. The last trace of them was the particles of floating dust, bright like floating fire.

Erica Sehyun Song

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there really is some goodness here in our world. But if goodness existed, that must mean that darkness existed as well.

Erica Sehyun Song

I stood at the grassy edge and tentatively dipped my toe into the water. I watched the ripple spread and break the perfect reflection before composing itself. The ripple then rushed towards a mass of rocks to one side.

Erica Sehyun Song

She was merely an actress who had been forced to perform her part on stage without fully knowing her lines. She was not real.

Erica Sehyun Song

As we drifted away from the Tower Bridge, I saw a single silhouette standing against the bright lamplight. Even now when I was nearly asleep, I could recognise her. Her shoulders were hunched up as if she was upset. Whether she was upset that she had nearly killed me or that she had let me get away, I was unsure. Then she turned around and walked to join the other silhouettes standing in a group farther back. Now I could not see which one was Rose – they were all joint together to make one.

Erica Sehyun Song

The four of us stood in silence as we watched the surrounding girls play games or gossip. It was almost as if I did not belong here anymore. It was like I was peering in through a window from a completely different world.

Erica Sehyun Song

We laughed as we ducked behind a pile of snow. Then our brothers came charging through the barrier, sending the four of us sliding down a white slope full of cherished memories.

Erica Sehyun Song

She was not in the body of a young woman but just as I remembered her: a little toddler with a beautiful smile. She reached out with her small hand, and I gripped her tiny fingers as I let go of the pain and sank deeper into the lake.

Erica Sehyun Song

I opened my eyes and watched the water stream past me. I let out some of my air and gazed at the cascade of silver bubbles dancing up to the surface.

Erica Sehyun Song

He may care for her, though she really has been almost rude to him at times. But she! – why, Margaret would never think of him, I’m sure! Such a thing has never entered her head.""Entering her heart would do.

Elizabeth Gaskell

I'm accustomed to reading Georgian and Victorian letters and sometimes you simply know in your gut that a blithe sentence is covering up a deeper emotion.

Sara Sheridan

I'm accustomed to reading Georgian and Victorian letters and sometimes you simply know in your gut that a blithe sentence is covering up a deeper emotion.

Sara Sheridan

I held a brief debate with myself as to whether I should change my ordinary attire for something smarter. At last I concluded it would be a waste of labour. "Doubtless," though I, "she is some stiff old maid ; for though the daughter of Madame Reuter, she may well number upwards of forty winters; besides, if it were otherwise, if she be both young and pretty, I am not handsome, and no dressing can make me so, therefore I'll go as I am." And off I started, cursorily glancing sideways as I passed the toilet-table, surmounted by a looking-glass: a thin irregular face I saw, with sunk, dark eyes under a large, square forehead, complexion destitute of bloom or attraction; something young, but not youthful, no object to win a lady's love, no butt for the shafts of Cupid.

Charlotte Brontë

She was shocked when she followed her aunt and cousin down into the city proper. The streets were crawling with people, all hurrying to and fro, mindless of one another. They brushed by with barely even a glance, stepping down into the busy roads between horse drawn buses and draymen’s carts with such confidence, seemingly oblivious that they could be run down at any moment. Children dodged in and out amongst them, ragamuffins all, some barefoot.

Lillian White

Pardon me; I must seem to you so stupid! Why is the property of the woman who commits Murder, and the property of the woman who commits Matrimony, dealt with alike by your law?

Frances Power Cobbe

Company, you see - company is - is - it's a very different thing from solitude - an't it?

Charles Dickens

There was a sudden flash of lightning which brightly illuminated our faces. I squinted against the harsh light. It was soon followed by the crack of thunder. The strong wind whipped our hair around our faces, and the younger girls squealed as they quickly ran across the grass to get inside the school.tRose and I sat up, smiles on our faces as we listened to the weather’s dangerous melody. The third flash of lightning finally ripped open the sky’s belly. Freezing rain cascaded out, drenching us in a matter of seconds, the flower garlands drooping and lying limp on our matted hair.

Erica Sehyun Song

The two of us locked up our own little secrets from the real world. We had experienced countless sleepless nights when we would share our fears, our worries, and our passions; when we would gossip about the school and the other girls. We had played too many pranks and snuck out more than enough times to be expelled if the teachers ever found out. We were professionals at the art of being discreet; however, we had never found sneaking out of a residence necessary, especially when the reason was not to play a prank.

Erica Sehyun Song

The rain landed on my skin with a barely audible patter and changed the tempo of its repetitive dance, letting the wind change its course and angle. The cold soon seeped through my dress and into my bones. An iris from my garland fell in my lap.

Erica Sehyun Song

I took my friend’s hand as she helped me up. With our hands still linked and our flower crowns tangled in our hair, we danced, laughing with joy, through the rain and towards the school, the lightning showing us our path with its powerful light.

Erica Sehyun Song

Making friends is not a big deal. Replacing me with them after talking to them for only one bloody day is a big deal.

Erica Sehyun Song

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Victorian Quotes

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