Victorian Quotes

“Some ghosts are so quiet you would hardly know they were there.”
― Bernie Mcgill, The Butterfly Cabinet

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”
― Oscar Wilde

“There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“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

“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 hear him.
“I said, try it.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Marrying Winterborne

“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

“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, The Haunted House

“Enlarged sympathy with children was one of the chief contributions made by the Victorian English to real civilization.”
― G.M. Trevelyan

“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, The Professor

“Tea no more! Down with bustles!”
― Nancy Moser, Masquerade

“Oh, Ed!" Mom exclaimed. "It's a Victorian.”
― Robert Liparulo, House of Dark Shadows

“In the world of The Age of Innocence, a financial disaster or moral scandal would permanently exile a guest from the finest dinner tables. In contemporary New York, a mere change of fashion can eliminate a place setting; therefore, the need to maintain a rigidity not of morals, but of taste, seems all the more desperate.”
― Wendy Wasserstein

“All life was here. With respectable citizens mixed beggars – who made their trade obvious – and pickpockets – who did not.”
― Ann Granger, The Dead Woman of Deptford

“But the moral?’
‘That woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present educating her, is his enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work.”
― Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs

“Една котка дращеше по вратата, а под каменния под на камината се чуваше звук от гризене на плъхове. Какво искаха те в стаята на смъртта и защо бяха тъй неспокойни и тревожни, Скрудж не дръзваше да си помисли.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“...и благодарение на смъртта на този човек, къщата беше по-щастлива!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“Fate is a cunning hussy”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters: Volume 1

“We were mad - drunk with rebellion.”
― E. M. Forster, Where angels fear to tread

“Despite her pending nuptials, she found herself walking toward him, hoping to be introduced. Then the man chuckled at something Alastair said, and Hettie froze. She knew that cheeky smile. She’d seen that exact expression too many times to count.

“Your Grace!” Lady Lindsey exclaimed before rushing forward to greet him.

Finn?”
― Addy Du Lac, One Season with the Duke

“He knew how to hide, how to divert attention, how to mislead anyone to protect himself and what he held dear. He never moved without a sure path to victory, but now, with this gnawing ache corroding him, he wondered if there was a worse option.

Like watching Hettie belong to someone else. Someone like that arrogant jackass who didn’t deserve her smiles, her laughter, her passion…her children.”
― Addy Du Lac, One Season with the Duke

“His head lowered slowly, his eyes watching her carefully, and then his lips caught hers in a soft kiss that scattered every thought in her head. It was just the barest pressure of
his mouth against hers, but she felt it all through her body.”
― Addy Du Lac, One Season with the Duke

“She felt his sigh against her face and realized that he had pulled away from her.
She felt sluggish, as if he’d cast a spell that trapped her limbs in treacle.

When she opened her eyes, she found him watching her with an expression she’d never seen before. It seemed like a mix of delight and relief.”
― Addy Du Lac

“He was a Scot.

Romance was in his blood as much as tenacity and strategy.”
― Addy Du Lac

“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. —JOHN LOCKE”
― Lindsey Fitzharris, The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

“Needlework is a retreat from the white noise of everyday life. It is also, crucially, a choice rather than the social requirement it was for women in the 18th and 19th centuries...It is not something we do because we don't have better things to do with our time, but because we find it a creative, mindful and stimulating activity that lets our minds wander as our fingers track over what we're working on.”
― Jennie Batchelor, Jane Austen Embroidery: Regency Patterns Reimagined for Modern Stitchers

“The foreign correspondents who flocked to Christchurch were at once struck by the incongruity of a murder of the foulest kind occurring in what the Sydney Sun-Herald called 'New Zealand's quietest, staidest, most Victorian-English city - a city of bicycles, lace and old ivy.”
― Peter Graham, Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century

“The man who entered looked even younger than Inspector Slaughter had expected. His paperwork said he was twenty-seven years old, but he looked more like twenty. And his height bordered on the ridiculous. But it wouldn’t do to comment. Slaughter rose and moved from behind the desk to shake hands.”
― Lisa M. Lane, Murder at Old St. Thomas's

“I, as you may have discovered, regard the whole idea of marriage with abhorrence. I hold that, as things now stand in this civilization of ours, a woman's one absolute right is her right to herself. She is her own inalienable possession. Why should she give herself up to a man; becoming his chattel, to do with as he pleases? Why should she lose all right over her own person, her own property, her own liberty of action and regulation of circumstance? Why should she change her very name for his? If the two could stand on a platform of absolute independence and equality, the thing might be bearable—for some. It would still be intolerable to me! But, as the law and social usage now stand, marriage is—to the woman—practically slavery; and, therefore, an unspeakable degradation!”
― Virginia Woolf

“Oh Mrs. Churchill, do come over. Someone has killed father." - Lizzie Borden, August 4, 1892”
― Lizzie Borden

“He didn’t think. He didn’t strategize. For once, he acted purely with his heart, doing what he most wanted to do. What he’d dreamed of doing from almost the first moment of their acquaintance.
He bent his head and he kissed her...”
― Mimi Matthews, A Lady of Conscience