I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.
I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.
The books – the generous friends who met me without suspicion – the merciful masters who never used me ill!
Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.
No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.
You musn’t talk of a young lady *belonging* to anybody, as if she was a piece of furniture, or money in the Three per Cent, or something of that sort.
Only give a woman love, and there is nothing she will not venture, suffer, and do.
The mystery which underlies the beauty of women is never raised above the reach of all expression until it has claimed kindred with the deeper mystery in our own souls.
I am an average good Christian, when you don’t push my Christianity too far. And all the rest of you—which is a great comfort—are, in this respect, much the same as I am.
Nature’s voice and Nature’s beauty—God’s soothing and purifying angels of the soul—speak to me most tenderly and most happily, at such times as these.
The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.
The clouds had gathered, within the last half-hour. The light was dull; the distance was dim. The lovely face of Nature met us, soft and still and colourless – met us without a smile.
The fool’s crime is the crime that is found out and the wise man’s crime is the crime that is not found out.
Miss Fairlie laughed with a ready good-humour, which broke out as brightly as if it had been part of the sunshine above us…
I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature’s only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.
Shall I confess it, Mr. Hartright? I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature’s only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.
Destiny has got the rope round my neck – and I feel it.
Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.
Sympathies that lie too deep for words, too deep almost for thoughts, are touched, at such times, by other charms than those which the senses feel and which the resources of expression can realise.
The explanation has been written already in the three words that were many enough, and plain enough, for my confession. I loved her.
I dread the beginning of her new life more than words can tell, but I see some hope for her if she travels – none if she remains at home.
The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.
If you will look about you (which most people won’t do),” says Sergeant Cuff, “you will see that the nature of a man’s tastes is, most times, as opposite as possible to the nature of a man’s business.
If ever sorrow and suffering set their profaning marks on the youth and beauty of Miss Fairlie’s face, then, and then only, Anne Catherick and she would be the twin-sisters of chance resemblance, the living reflections of one another.
But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back?
What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their finding-places in a woman’s dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!
I should have looked into my own heart, and found this new growth springing up there, and plucked it out while it was young.
I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason.
But I am a just man, even to my enemy—and I will acknowledge, beforehand, that they are cleverer brains than I thought them.
Is the prison that Mr. Scoundrel lives in at the end of his career a more uncomfortable place than the workhouse that Mr. Honesty lives in at the end of his career?
If I ever meet with the man who fulfills my ideal, I shall make it a condition of the marriage settlement, that I am to have chocolate under the pillow.
I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to meet the cool night air in the suburbs.
He was, out of all sight (as I remember him), the nicest boy that ever spun a top or broke a window.
I hope I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather warmly.
Not a word had dropped from my lips, or from hers, that could unsettle either of us—and yet the same unacknowledged sense of embarrassment made us shrink alike from meeting one another alone
I am thinking,’ he remarked quietly, ’whether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scattering your brains about the fireplace.
Excuse my dress. I was half an hour late this morning. When you lose half an hour in this house, you never can pick it up again, try how you may. -Reverend Finch’s wife
Your tears come easy, when you’re young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you’re old, and leaving it. I burst out crying.
The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?
I find novels compose my mind. Do you read novels too? – Reverend Finch’s wife
There is nothing serious in mortality! Solomon in all his glory was Solomon with the elements of the contemptible lurking in every fold of his robes and in every corner of his palace.
It was cold and barren. It was no longer the view that I remembered. The sunshine of her presence was far from me. The charm of her voice no longer murmured in my ear.
You don’t have to speak at all—I know what you’d say…- Laura
This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.
I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is – the enormous prosperity of Fools.