Victorian Era Quotes

“I suppose I really seemed mad, then; but it was only through the awfulness of having said nothing but the truth, and being thought to be deluded.”
― Sarah Waters, Fingersmith

“She wore tight corsets to give her a teeny waist - I helped her lace them up - but they had the effect of causing her to faint. Mom called it the vapors and said it was a sign of her high breeding and delicate nature. I thought it was a sign that the corset made it hard to breathe.”
― Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses

“Has anyone been corrupted or defiled?"
"Since the age of twelve," West said.
"I wasn't asking you, I was asking the girls."
"Not yet," Cassandra replied cheerfully.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Cold-Hearted Rake

“What do ladies wear beneath their riding trousers?"
"I would think an infamous rake would already know."
"I was never infamous. In fact, I'm fairly standard as far as rakes go."
"The ones who deny it are the worst.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Cold-Hearted Rake

“I AM the current curator of the black trunk and the stories it holds within.”
― Hope Barrett, Discovering Oscar

“I've often thought a blind man could find his way through London simply by gauging the changes in innuendo: mild through Trafalgar Square, less veiled towards the river.”
― Louis Bayard, Mr. Timothy

“In the mystifying world that was Victorian parenthood, obedience took precedence over all considerations of affection and happiness, and that odd, painful conviction remained the case in most well-heeled homes up until at least the time of the First World War.”
― Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life

“Don't forget to speak scornfully of the Victorian Age; there will be time for meekness when you try to better it. Very soon you will be Victorian or that sort of thing yourselves; next session probably, when the freshman come up.”
― J.M. Barrie, Courage

“The Hotel dining-room, like most of the others I was to find in the Highlands, had its walls covered with pictures of all sorts of wild game, living or in the various postures of death that are produced by sport. Between these pictures the walls were alert with the stuffed heads of deer, furnished with antlers of every degree of magnificence. A friend of mine has a theory that these pictures of dying birds and wounded beasts are intended to whet the diner's appetite, and perhaps they did in the more lusty age of Victoria; but I found they had the opposite effect on me, and had to keep my eyes from straying too often to them. In one particular hotel this idea was carried out with such thoroughness that the walls of its dining room looked like a shambles, they presented such an overwhelming array of bleeding birds, beasts and fishes. To find these abominations on the walls of Highland hotels, among a people of such delicacy in other things, is peculiarly revolting, and rubs in with superfluous force that this is a land whose main contemporary industry is the shooting down of wild creatures; not production of any kind but wholesale destruction. This state of things is not the fault of the Highlanders, but of the people who have bought their country and come to it chiefly to kill various forms of life.”
― Edwin Muir, Scottish Journey

“I have, at last, come to understand my role. It is not to discourage your exuberance or your audacity. How could I want to when those are the very qualities I admire most? If I have lectured or harangued in the past, it is because I am afraid. Every moment of every day I am afraid.

Afraid of losing that which I have come to realize I cannot live without. But I do not want a small and stifled version of you. I want you- in all your intrepid and audacious glory. I want you just as you are, the entirety of your chaos and your wildness. Your are the whirlwind I did not know I needed, but now that you are here, I will not be the one to ask you to be anything different than exactly as you are. More than anyone, I ought to understand that nature cannot be denied. And your nature is tumult.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Grave Robbery

“What the hell is this stuff?" he muttered, frowning at the oily spot on the linen cloth. "Pearlman slathered it on me this morning."

"It's macassar oil. Gentlemen use it to keep their hair neat. Nicholas used it," she added pointedly.

"Well, tomorrow he's giving it up. I smell like a rotten apple."

"You do not. And I think it looks rather nice."

He sent her an incredulous look. "I look like an otter. And everything I put my head against gets greasy."

"That's why someone invented the antimacassar," she told him, almost smiling.

"The-aha!" He laughed as he made the connection. "Of course. First they invent something stupid, then something ugly to make up for it. We live in a wondrous age, Annie.”
― Patricia Gaffney, Thief of Hearts

“For reasons I have yet to define, Signor Arpelli stood out from his colleagues. The curled brim of his hat, perhaps. A certain mingling of gravity and levity- I thought the masks of Janus had merged in his eyes.”
― Louis Bayard, Mr. Timothy

“There are fewer things sadder than a poorly attended funeral.”
― Chris Priestley, The Dead of Winter

“The courses their lives took mirrored that of so many other women of the Victorian age, and yet were so singular in the way they ended. It is for them that I write this book. I do so in the hope that we may now hear their stories clearly and give back to them that which was so brutally taken away with their lives: their dignity.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“Surely Victoria's mental health suffered because all the men around her expected it to.”
― Lucy Worsley, Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow

“In both England and America, women were expected to be the angels of the home. Not only were they to practice strict moderation for themselves but they were also responsible for the moderation of everyone in the house. Victorian ideals created an impossible situation for women: have none of the power, yet all of the responsibility.”
― Mallory O'Meara, Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol

“I want morning and noon and nightfall with you. I want your tears, your smiles, your kisses...the smell of your hair, the taste of your skin, the touch of your breath on my face. I want to see you in the final hour of my life...to lie in your arms as I take my last breath.”
― Lisa Kleyplas, Again the Magic

“-El verde es el color de la envidia -le recordó-. ¿Quieres que el resto de las damas me tengan envidia?
-No. Quiero que los hombres me la tengan a mí.”
― Raquel Arbeteta García, Amor y conveniencia

“Η κουρτίνα μαζεύτηκε στην άκρη και μέσα από την αψίδα φάνηκε η τραπεζαρία με τον αναμμένο πολυέλαιο της, που έχυνε το φως του στα ασημικά και τα κρύσταλλα ενός υπέροχου σερβίτσιου στρωμένου πάνω στο μεγάλο τραπέζι. Μια παρέα κυρίες στεκόταν στο άνοιγμα. Μπήκαν και η κουρτίνα έπεσε πίσω τους. Δεν ήταν παρά οχτώ. Μπαίνοντας όλες μαζί μέσα, έδιναν την εντύπωση πως ήταν πολύ περισσότερες. Κάποιες τους ήταν πολύ ψηλές, πολλές ήταν ντυμένες στα λευκά και όλες είχαν φαρδιές τουαλέτες που σέρνονταν στο πάτωμα και έδειχναν να μεγεθύνουν το παρουσιαστικό τους, όπως η ομίχλη μεγεθύνει τη σελήνη… Σκόρπισαν μέσα στο δωμάτιο, θυμίζοντας μου, με την ελαφράδα και την ρευστότητα των κινήσεων τους, κοπάδι από λευκά φουντωτά πουλιά.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jan Eyre

“Do you mean to dissuade me? Point out the flaws in my plan? Express your objections with vehemence and eloquence?"

He tipped his head. "Actually, no."

"Are you entirely well? Have you a fever? Should I palpate something?”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Grave Robbery

“If I could have created a perfect woman, I could never have imagined you. But that is my failure. Not yours.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Grave Robbery

“The Victorian era produced more Victorian writers than any other period in history.”
― Diane Morgan

“They were blue eyes. Impossibly blue. Charles's words of warning died on his lips. For an instant, he forgot where he was. It was only for an instant.”
― Mimi Matthews

“Notoriety is by no means a death sentence in the world of art.”
― Laura Purcell, The Corset The captivating novel from the prize-winning author of The Silent Companions 2019-Paperback -

“Nada es personal en estos bailes, ¿verdad? Y, en el fondo, todo lo es.”
― Raquel Arbeteta García, Amor y conveniencia

“Con su mirada le decía que podía bailar con quien quisiera. Podía hacerlo con sus amigas o con cualquier caballero. Vestida de hombre o de mujer. No importaba, siempre y cuando reservase para él su último baile.”
― Raquel Arbeteta García, Amor y conveniencia

“That beautiful faith in human nature and in freedom which had made delicate the dry air of John Stuart Mill; that robust, romantic sense of justice which had redeemed even the injustices of Macaulay—all that seemed slowly and sadly to be drying up. Under the shock of Darwinism all that was good in the Victorian rationalism shook and dissolved like dust. All that was bad in it abode and clung like clay. The magnificent emancipation evaporated; the mean calculation remained. One could still calculate in clear statistical tables, how many men lived, how many men died. One must not ask how they lived; for that is politics. One must not ask how they died; for that is religion. And religion and politics were ruled out of all the Later Victorian debating clubs; even including the debating club at Westminster. What third thing they were discussing, which was neither religion nor politics, I do not know. I have tried the experiment of reading solidly through a vast number of their records and reviews and discussions; and still I do not know. The only third thing I can think of to balance religion and politics is art; and no one well acquainted with the debates at St. Stephen's will imagine that the art of extreme eloquence was the cause of the confusion. None will maintain that our political masters are removed from us by an infinite artistic superiority in the choice of words. The politicians know nothing of politics, which is their own affair: they know nothing of religion, which is certainly not their affair: it may legitimately be said that they have to do with nothing; they have reached that low and last level where a man knows as little about his own claim, as he does about his enemies'. In any case there can be no doubt about the effect of this particular situation on the problem of ethics and science. The duty of dragging truth out by the tail or the hind leg or any other corner one can possibly get hold of, a perfectly sound duty in itself, had somehow come into collision with the older and larger duty of knowing something about the organism and ends of a creature; or, in the everyday phrase, being able to make head or tail of it. This paradox pursued and tormented the Victorians. They could not or would not see that humanity repels or welcomes the railway-train, simply according to what people come by it. They could not see that one welcomes or smashes the telephone, according to what words one hears in it. They really seem to have felt that the train could be a substitute for its own passengers; or the telephone a substitute for its own voice.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“While the wound was not fatal, Victorian medicine unfortunately was.”
― Emma Southon, A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome

“A man cannot choose to die when he has not yet learnt to live." Stoker”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Grave Robbery

“She was lovely, of course. But it wasn’t that which had beguiled him so thoroughly against his will -- against his self-interest and his reason. It was the softness of her. The tender gravity in her gaze, and the reticence in her manner.”
― Mimi Matthews, A Lady of Conscience