Edwardian Quotes

Top of the Shitberg
The first small turds that come out of you after getting stuffed on Indian or Mexican food.
You're thinking, 'Is that it?' and a minute later the Mt. Everest of shit comes out of your ass - requiring two courtesy flushes followed by a plunger.

Alternate meaning: A popular greeting among Jews living in Edwardian Dublin, when they met an the synagogue for morning services ~
'Top of the shitberg to you, Seamus Goldberg.'
'And a top of the shitberg to you, Leopold Bloom. ~ Beryl Dov

The reason I wanted to do 'The First Men in the Moon' was that there is something so challenging in the combination of space travel and the Edwardian period. ~ Mark Gatiss

Tea at the Ritz is the last delicious morsel of Edwardian London. The light is kind, the cakes are frivolous and the tempo is calm, confident and leisurely. ~ Helen Simpson

I've always been drawn to the Edwardian period in England. To me, it seems like such a fascinating time, when the British Empire was at the height of its powers and the strict mores of the Victorian age were dissipating into the decadence of King Edward's reign. ~ Kevin Kwan

My great-grandfather, Sam Aykroyd, was a dentist in Kingston, Ontario, and he was also an Edwardian spiritualist researcher who was very interested in what was going on in the invisible world, the survival of the consciousness, precipitated paintings, mediumship, and trans-channeling. ~ Dan Aykroyd

The show is like an Edwardian play - emotional life gets stepped on for the sake of accepted manners, and that's terrific for actors to play in. ~ Jason Alexander

I settled in with The Uninvited Guests thinking I knew what kind of Edwardian pleasures were in store: the fraught dinner party in an endangered, rambling house, the feuding family, the rich suitor, the disruptive visitors. The novel has all of those delightful things, but it also defied every one of my expectations. I saw none of it coming. I read it in one breathless sitting, and finished wanting to give it to everyone I know. ~ Maile Meloy

The Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors offered him a six-figure sum in recognition of his pioneering wartime inventions. Jefferis was gratified but turned it down. 'His Edwardian principals of right and wrong were very strong,' said his son John.16 He did not believe he should profit from having helped to defeat Hitler. ~ Giles Milton

If I am asked to give advice to those who are inclined to spend their time and their money on the Turf I should give them the advice 'Punch' gave to those about to marry
– don't." --5th Earl of Roseberry

The Fast Set: The World of Edwardian Racing by George Plumptre, 1985. ~ D.E. Ireland

I mean to explore you thoroughly this time."

"Take heed, Captain. I'm prepared to answer all threats measure for measure. ~ Sherri Browning

I thought that strange syntax was the language of story books. I didn't realize those were poor translations ... English from Edwardian times. ~ Sandra Cisneros

Last Victorian and Edwardian Britain saw a mega-change in reading habits. For the first time fiction took the primary place in book publishing, and the medium was taken up by briliant and entertaining authors with an agenda for 'a brave new world'. Such men as Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were the opinion-makers for coming generations. 'With the next phase of Victorian fiction', wrote G. K. Chesterton, 'we enter a new world; the later, more revolutionary, more continental, freer but in some ways weker world in which we live today.'
Chesterton did not live to see the full consequences of the change but W. R. Inge predicted what was coming when he wrote:
No God. No country. No family. Refusal to serve in war. Free love. More play. Less work. No punishments. Go as you please. It is difficult to imagine any programme which, if carried out, would be more utterly ruinous to a country situated as Great Britain is today. ~ Iain H. Murray

It's not the type of work you can put on a business card.
I sometimes play the game with myself, though. What would I put on a business card?
Jill Kismet, Exorcist. Maybe on a nice heavy cream-colored card stock, with a good font. Not pretentious, just something tasteful. Garamond, maybe, or Book Antiqua. In bold. Or one of those old-fashioned fonts, but no frilly Edwardian script.
Of course, there's slogans to be taken into account. Jill Kismet, Dealer in Dark Things. Spiritual Exterminator. Slayer of Hell's Minions. ~ Lilith Saintcrow

I love him to death, there's an Edwardian finishing touch to everything he does. ~ Helene Hanff

There she sits in the corner of the carriage - that carriage which is travelling, not from Richmond to Waterloo, but from one age of English literature to the next, for Mrs. Brown is eternal, Mrs. Brown is human nature, Mrs. Brown changes only on the surface, it is the novelists who get in and out - there she sits and not one of the Edwardian writers has so much as looked at her. They have looked very power- fully, searchingly, and sympathetically out of the window ; at factories, at Utopias, even at the decoration and upholstery of the carriage ; but never at her, never at life, never at human nature. ~ Virginia Woolf

On the face of it, no one could have been less equipped for the job than these gently nurtured girls who walked straight out of Edwardian drawingrooms into the manifold horrors of the First World War. ~ Lyn Macdonald

It took a while to shoot the scene by the coconut stall at the fun fair, so Michelle (Mary) and I had a competition. I think she beat me 10-1 - she was uncannily good. The crew were very disappointed in me. To be beaten by a woman is bad enough, but one in Edwardian dress is really highlighting something. ~ Jessica Fellowes

Perhaps their papas should buy them some manners instead of squandering their wealth on party dresses. ~ Margie Bayer

I'm sorry," he said in a soft voice while leaning closer to her, "for taking liberties earlier. I hope I didn't offend you."

"You kissed me," she answered, equally quietly, then laughed out loud. "I was a little shocked at first, perhaps, but I'm over it."

"Over it?" His heart sank. Not the reaction he'd hoped. Perhaps he was out of practice.

"I rather enjoyed it, if you must know. It has been a long time since I've had such a kiss. Nothing like a bold and lingering kiss. How I've missed it. Ah, now you look shocked. Good. I've had my revenge. ~ Sherri Browning

Mr. Evans beamed. "Could I get you a drink?" he said. The words were ordinary; the phrase was one that Maureen had heard and often welcomed at endless dozens of parties. But Mr. Evans managed to invest it with such a delightful Edwardian gallantry that you almost thought he had said, "May I bring an ice to you in the conservatory? ~ Anthony Boucher

As a young man he seemed to pine for a bygone world of aristocrats. [In his twenties, he] took to wearing Edwardian three-piece suits with a pocket watch and chain.

[discussing Kip Forbes] ~ Benjamin Wallace

Depression must be avoided, no matter what the cost. Depression is lying on the Edwardian couch for six months, too tired to unlace your shoes. Depression is awakening each morning feeling as if someone near and dear and closely related died the night before. Bad news. Don't tempt depression. ~ Tim Sandlin

Marmite - like that other little black-jar job, Bovril - is so much a Mark 1 staple-of-Empire brand, so much part of the Edwardian world of enamel advertising signs, the history of grin-and-bear-it industrial food. ~ Peter York

An Edwardian lady in full dress was a wonder to behold, and her preparations for viewing were awesome. ~ William Manchester

The great white sharks with their rough, pale sides, the killer whales striped in black and white like an Edwardian garden chaise. ~ Cassandra Clare

WWI is a romantic war, in all senses of the word. An entire generation of men and women left the comforts of Edwardian life to travel bravely, and sometimes even jauntily, to almost certain death. At the very least, any story or novel about WWI is about innocence shattered in the face of experience. ~ Anita Shreve

Miss Parkinson lived alone in a big bay-windowed house of Edwardian brick with a vast garden of decaying fruit trees and untidy hedges of gigantic size. She was great at making elderberry wine and bottling fruit and preserves and lemon curd and drying flowers for winter. She felt, like Halibut, that things were not as they used to be. The synthetic curse of modern times lay thick on everything. There was everywhere a sad drift from Nature. ~ H.E. Bates

The world of 1906 ... was a stable and a civilized world in which the greatness and authority of Britain and her Empire seemed unassailable and invulnerably secure. In spite of our reverses in the Boer War it was assumed unquestioningly that we should always emerge "victorious, happy and glorious" from any conflict. There were no doubts about the permanence of our "dominion over palm and pine", or of our title to it. Powerful, prosperous, peace-loving, with the seas all round us and the Royal Navy on the seas, the social, economic, international order seemed to our unseeing eyes as firmly fixed on earth as the signs of the Zodiac in the sky. ~ Violet Bonham Carter

[The Edwardian era] was a time of booming trade, of great prosperity and wealth in which the pageant of London Society took place year after year in a setting of traditional dignity and beauty. The great houses - Devonshire, Dorchester, Grosvenor, Stafford and Lansdowne House - had not yet been converted into museums, hotels and flats, and there we danced through the long summer nights till dawn. The great country-houses still flourished in their glory, and on their lawns in the green shade of trees the art of human intercourse was exquisitely practised by men and women not yet enslaved by household cares and chores who still had time to read, to talk, to listen and to think. ~ Violet Bonham Carter

Who can stop influenza and tuberculosis? The wealth of high society cannot buy off this evil, for their bored children die alongside everyone else. ~ Margie Bayer

Susannah Buxton, costume designer: These three dresses demonstrate well the different ways in which we brought the costumes together for the show. Mary's dress was made for her, Edith's was hired - it was previously used in the Merchant-Ivory production of A Room With A View - and Sybil's is an original Edwardian summer dress. ~ Jessica Fellowes

This was a pretty girl, except she had legs like an Edwardian grand piano ... ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another agewhen so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order. ~ Ellen Glasgow

Pride of place in my wardrobe is an Edwardian-style Norfolk Jacket in Derby Tweed. It is silk-lined with leather-clad buttons and has a smell that reminds me of wet moss and fallen leaves. ~ Fennel Hudson

Among the masked dandies of Edwardian comedy, Max Beerbohm is the most happily armored by a deep and almost innocent love of himself as a work of art. ~ V.S. Pritchett

Fitz sat in a green leather armchair. To Ethel's surprise, Albert Solman was there, too, in a black suit and a stiff-collared shirt. A lawyer by training, Solman was what Edwardian gentlemen called a man of business. He managed Fitz's money, checking his income from coal royalties and rents, paying the bills, and issuing cash for staff wages. He also dealt with leases and other contracts, and occasionally brought lawsuits against people who tried to cheat Fitz. Ethel had met him before and did not like him. She thought he was a know-all. Perhaps all lawyers were; she did not know: he was the only one she had ever met. ~ Ken Follett

With the possible exception of steampunk aficionados, many reasonable people must view my fascination with Victorian and Edwardian popular fiction - mysteries, fantasy, and adventure - as eccentric or merely antiquarian. ~ Michael Dirda

What's really interesting is when you get a brand-new wave that has no connection to anything else. It always reflects society. The flappers would cut the dresses and make them looser, they smoked, their hair was short. It was a rebellion against the corset and the Edwardian era. ~ Annie Lennox

I suppose," continued Nate, "it's not Bertie's fault that he lacks the physical stature to carry a delicate young woman such as yourself a good distance. I believe he did not care to see you within the folds of my arms which were reluctant to release you, for I thought I would never see you again... ~ Margie Bayer

A number of his friends whose wilfully overburdened lives inhibited the enjoyment of all but necessary pleasures somehow found time to take afternoon tea with the Ackroyds in their neat Edwardian villa in Swiss Cottage with its comfortable sitting-room and atmosphere of timeless indulgence. ~ P.D. James

I have a vernacular house on the seaside in Northumberland and an Edwardian semi in south Manchester. They're both exactly as big as they need to be. I can't be doing with an ostentatious, big house - you can only be in one room at a time. ~ Val McDermid

As the carriage bumped her bones along the dark country lanes, Martha decided that if she ever got back to her own time she would write a book called 'Travel in the Edwardian Era. It would be a short book - OUCH in capital letters followed by fifty pages of bad language. ~ Stephen Cole

Katie shook her head in dismay. "I thought being poor was the worst thing that could happen to a girl."
"No, Katie," the countess said in a clear voice. "The worst thing is to be in love with one man and have to marry another."
Katie O'Reilly to the Countess of Marbury in "Titanic Rhapsody ~ Jina Bacarr

He began to get the feeling that dear Uncle Carol "was drifting about in an Edwardian summer ~ Robert Sellers