Stephanie Barron Quotes

The long blue shadows of afternoon advanced before me like cheerful ghosts of last summer's growth, dancing past the withered flower borders and the stiff hedges to fall at the feet of a stone nymph, her cascade of water frozen in her urn.

To be continually underestimated is a woman's lot.

Anonymity may be a powerful drug; it is as well we do not taste too much of it in our daily lives.

It is ever thus. We find the words to speak when all hope of converse is past.

We cannot expect the men we appoint to govern us, to be better than ourselves.

Is lawlessness to be permitted, simply because it is effected with a certain style? Jane, Jane! Where are your finer sensibilities? All o'erthrown, by a man with a golden tongue and a mocking glance?

There is nothing like a bit of ink to bring reason to the most disordered mind.

The world, however bleak I have found it in the last few weeks, must nonetheless be formed of goodness, if but a few moments in Nature's company may suffice to renew one's health and mental aspect.

The landscape artist had captured a distant prospect of an ancient hillside, surmounted by cyprus and a few tumbled columns; the mood was one of desolation and peace, a glorious past recalled, and now thankfully put to rest.

I was treated once more to a novelist's valuable lesson, however - in apprehending that one's perception of plot and character are influenced entirely by one's own experience. To hear Mary tell the story of our Christmas at The Vyne, one would have thought that she was hounded by violence from first to last - perceived more than anybody of the nature of the probable murderer - and barely escaped with her life. It was a lesson in writerly humility. We are each the heroines of our own lives.

The fate of all things cherished and expensive, to be lost at hazard, and well before their time

There is something so INEVITABLE about seven-and-twenty; it is decidedly on the wrong side of the decade for a lady, particularly an unmarried one.