Italianate Victorian Quotes

When I was working on a Victorian-era novel, to get in the mood, I read several historical novels set in approximately the same period and place, and really enjoyed the detective novels of John Dickson Carr. ~ Tim Pratt

It is a sort of great Victorian truth that actually, trying to do the right thing is pretty good for you and pretty good for business as well, by and large. ~ Chris Patten

You know this is wrong."

It isn't a question. When he turns, White is still wrapped snug in the counterpane, motionless, just his gaze pursuing the doctor about the room. "I am wrong to do this." The doctor says it as if instructing himself. White says nothing. With a sigh, Archer sits on the edge of the bed, smoothing White's curls back from his forehead. "Do you know what we did last night?" To admit it, to speak out loud, seems in itself a terrible affront. It might be his imagination, but the doctor fancies he sees a slight lowering of black lashes, the tiniest quirk of a shy smile. He says, wearily but not without affection, "No, I don't suppose you do. ~ John T. Fuller

We men had a meeting a long time ago, and we all decided, 'It's trousers'. And that's what we've worn ever since. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Company, you see - company is - is - it's a very different thing from solitude - an't it? ~ Charles Dickens

Dan wasn't bothered by the cold; nestled beneath two down comforters, he was warm as tea and toast. Yet the wind had found its way inside his head just as it found its way under the sashes and doorsills of the old Victorian he now called home. In his dream, he could hear it moaning around the hotel where he had spent one winter as a little boy. In his dream, he was that little boy. ~ Stephen King

The greatest act of love was to make a tape for someone. It was the only way we could share music and it was also a way of advertising yourself. Selection, order, the lettering you used for the track list, how much technical detail you went into, whether or not you added artwork or offered only artwork and no track list at all, these choices were as codified as a Victorian bouquet. ~ Lavinia Greenlaw

I've come back for you, my love, my life. Let me look at you, keep you, never let go of you. ~ Sandra Byrd

I closed my eyes. "Crap. I'm not ready to start Clocking again. The trip back to get Ringo was fine because I kind of know the Victorian rules. And Victorians believe in bathing." I grimaced and Archer laughed, a deep rumble in his chest. "And don't even get me started on street-dumping chamber pots. Seriously? Why even bother. Just dangle your business out the window and let fly. It's the same thing." Archer's ~ April White

If you walked around like David Bowie in 1973 in Reading, you'd get beaten up. The 1970s in a small town was more like the 1950s.. and that's the truth. The backdrop was probably Victorian. ~ Ricky Gervais

Standing at the original Victorian counter was a man in a long black leather coat. His hair had been grown to counteract its unequivocal retreat from the top of his head, and was fashioned into a mean, frail ponytail that hung limply down his back. Blooms of acne highlighted his vampire-white skin. ~ Julia Stuart

One of my most sentimental items is my grandmother's engagement ring that my mom gave me a few years ago. It's a Victorian-style setting that's closed in the back, so it doesn't sparkle the way diamonds do now. I wear it as a pendant. ~ Georgina Chapman

Going by Dr. Marriott's description, Zoe imagined it to be small and elegant as she peered into dozens of shelves, rummaging through the contents. There were globes and charts and atlases, pocket watches and hand-painted Indian silk, gold-plated cutlery, litter coffers of spice, inlaid combs, silver fasteners, trinket boxes, blown-glass figurines, turn-of-the-century postcards with foreign stamps, and portraits of Victorian authors in elaborate frames. But nowhere did she discover a stone of any kind, with or without runes. ~ Christine Brodien-Jones

Tides of History provides a splendid prism through which we may view the wider world of Victorian science ... Historians of science will have cause to heap praise on this book, but so too will the non-specialists. The author's splendid writing style, at times appropriately Puckish, makes this work an accessible and enjoyable read. ~ William M. Fowler

I love the alien in people, god I love the wildness, the wit, the lightning of the Other mind. A kind of sex-in-the-head, you know it's a rather Victorian affliction. Something to do with communication. I have had moments of communication with people, often totally unsuitable people, which had a truly unholy intensity... A sort of orgasmic meaningfulness and clarity, you know, all the old romantic stuff - two strangers stop and suddenly exchange glimpses of reality before moving on into the mists. ~ James Tiptree Jr.

As I got older, I got more Victorian and morbid. I got into things that circled around death, like skulls or morgue photographs or handwritten diaries. They can be almost haunted with all this history, and you project onto it and then it gets onto you. ~ Dustin Yellin

It was known as the Sick Man of Europe. It was in every way poorer than now. Yet there were flowerbeds on roundabouts, libraries and post offices in every village, cottage hospitals in abundance, council housing for all who needed it. It was a country so comfortable and enlightened that hospitals maintained cricket pitches for their staff and mental patients lived in Victorian palaces. If we could afford it then, why not now? Someone needs to explain to me how it is that the richer Britain gets the poorer it thinks itself. ~ Bill Bryson

The only permissible judgment in polite society is that no judgment is permissible. A century-long reaction against Victorian prudery, repression, and hypocrisy, led by intellectuals who mistook their personal problems for those of society as a whole, has created this confusion. It is as though these intellectuals were constantly on the run from their stern, unbending, and joyless forefathers - and as if they took as an unfailing guide to wise conduct either the opposite of what their forefathers said and did, or what would have caused them most offence, had they been able even to conceive of the possibility of such conduct. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

Well, this is a story about books."
About books?"
About accursed books, about a man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of anovel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind."
You talk like the jacket blurb of a Victorian novel, Daniel."
That's probably because I work in a bookshop and I've seen too many. But this is a true story. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Victorian society was homogeneous without being homogenized. It was, to paraphrase the epigram about Parliament, a society of extreme eccentrics who agreed so well that they could afford to differ. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

Abigail had no interest in the dolls themselves. Only in what she could keep from them. ~ Christie Stratos

When I wrote that [Elias] Canetti 'desired' a book, I was perhaps understating. He conveyed the sense that select books were inexorably his – magically so. Some years later, he came into the room in which I worked and saw on my table two books I had found on a bookstall the day before. One was a collection of Indian folktales called, I think, Tales My Amah Told Me; the other was a literal translation of – a crib to – the writings of the Emperor Julian. His wanting them exuded from him as a blatant and viscous desire that seemed almost tangible, as enveloping and threatening as any tentacles of ectoplasm emanating from a Victorian medium. Those books were no longer mine. I handed them over. ~ Joseph Rykwert

Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hill-side
And then come back down.
Singing: There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she!
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.
(from poem 'The Forsaken Merman') ~ Matthew Arnold

I don't write 'romance' stories, but character love stories, like the short story fiction published at Romantic4Ever.com and at WeddingNight.com, with romance of the heart and of adventure, in its many, many human varieties, as seen through the eyes and hearts and bodies of realist characters; whether about military special forces regiments, mail order brides in the outback, class-crossed samurai lovers, wealthy Victorian 'minorities,' or luscious vampires of another color. ~ Neale Sourna

I am fascinated by history and particularly the Victorian era. ~ Annie Lennox

Rebuilt in Victorian times, it retained the modesty of its medieval origins. Small and neat, its spire indicated the direction of heaven without trying to pierce a hole in it. ~ Diane Setterfield

An unhappy woman with access to weed killer had to be watched carefully. ~ James Ruddick

the taste for Victorian-era sci-fi futures is more than anything else a nostalgia for the last moment, before the carnage of World War I, when everyone could safely feel a redemptive future was possible. ~ David Graeber

We, while noting many things amiss about Victorian society, more often sense them judging us. ~ A. N. Wilson

He has had her today but he has not had her. No man ever shall. ~ Orna Ross

---In his major phase, he[Conrad] was "ahead of his times" in ideas and techniques;and this was because he was more intelligently and perceptively of his times than most writers then were. In his vigilant response to 19th century preoccupations, he anticipated--often critically--many 20th century preoccupations. He was a versatile intermediary between the Romantic and Victorian traditions and the innovations of Modernism. ~ Cedric Watts

The roof was a gymnasium for the winds ~ Thomas Hardy

I see. Because I'm not hideous, not a drunkard, and appear to bathe regularly, you picked me. How you flatter me. ~ Chris Karlsen

He seemed normal again, or as normal as Myrnin ever got, anyway. He'd begged, borrowed, or outright stolen a long, black velvet coat, and under it he was still wearing the poofy white Pierrot pants from his costume, dark boots, and no shirt. Long, black, glossy hair and decadently shining eyes.
Oliver took in the outfit, and raised a brow. "You look like you escaped from a Victorian brothel," he said. "One that . . . specialized."
In answer, Myrnin skinned up the sleeves of the coat. The wound in his back might have healed--or might be healing, anyway--but the burns on his wrists and hands were still livid red, with an unhealthy silver tint to them. "Not the sort of brothel I'd normally frequent, by choice," he said, "though of course you might be more adventurous, Oliver. ~ Rachel Caine

A collection of chairs seems to show someone that is used to resting while others get the work done. I have no use for finely crafted furniture. ~ Kat Daughtry

They say fiction is the closest we ever get to magic. Forget top hats and rabbits: open a book and an entire world will pop out. And it doesn't matter if it's dragons or Victorian orphans or wizards. You are immediately somewhere else and someone else. Transported. It's not like that with textbooks. ~ Holly Smale

The Thirties had seen the first generation of American industrial designers; until the Thirties, all pencil sharpeners looked like pencil sharpeners - your basic Victorian mechanism, perhaps with a curlicue of decorative trim. After the advent of the designers, some pencil sharpeners looked as though they'd been put together in wind tunnels. For the most part, the change was only skin-deep; under the streamlined chrome shell, you'd find the same Victorian mechanism. Which made a certain kind of sense, because the most successful American designers had been recruited from the ranks of Broadway theater designers. It was all a stage set, a series of elaborate props for playing at living in the future. ~ William Gibson

Cool. I was hanging out with a lunatic I'd found lurking over a dead person. I had a choice here. I could roll with this and somehow figure out how to get back to my real life, or I could freak out and lose it right here, probably be committed with him, and end up in a loony bin of truly epic Victorian ugliness, never to be seen again. ~ April White

The growth of art seems to be in cycles, and often its vigorous lifetime is restricted to a century or two. The periods of distinctive drama, Greek, English, Spanish, fall within such a limit; the schools of painting and sculpture likewise; and, in poetry, the Victorian age or the school of Pope will serve as examples. ~ George Edward Woodberry

So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid. ~ Thomas Hardy

He manages to appear puzzled, as if he can't quite remember how we all got in here. As if we are something he inherited, like a Victorian pump organ, and he hasn't figured out what to do with us. What we are worth. ~ Margaret Atwood

The four of us enjoyed a most wonderful family atmosphere filled with love and reciprocal devotion. Both parents were highly cultured and instilled in us their high appreciation of intellectual pursuit. It was, however, a typical Victorian style of life, all decisions being taken by the head of the family, the husband and father. ~ Rita Levi-Montalcini

the following September I started at the grammar school. This was in a red-brick building of the kind beloved by Victorian optimists. In ~ Sebastian Faulks

Some ministers are fond of talking about a return to Victorian values. We must realise that those Victorian values are being expressed by some of the younger people in this society in shameful and disturbing disregard for other members of their generation who are not as fortunate as they are in having a job. ~ Charles Kennedy

Hey," the cabbie yelled. "How's about a tip?"
"You bet-ski," Evie said, heading toward the old Victorian mansion, her long silk scarf trailing behind her. "Don't kiss strange men in Penn Station. ~ Libba Bray

Was it possible to be homesick for a soul? ~ Jessica Dotta