Victorian Flirting Quotes

I'll piously gather up the crumbs of your feasts and make a meal of them," said Nora. "I'll let you know how they taste. ~ Henry James

You're like a picture; you ought to be enclosed in a gilt frame and stand against the wall. ~ Henry James

And where are you going?" His voice was playfully challenging.
"To get some breakfast," she said without stopping.
He leered. "I've got something for you to eat," he called after her.
"I might bite it off, though," she said over her shoulder. ~ Ken Follett

Many people have compared me to the Victorian adventure writer, Rider Haggard. I accept that as a compliment. As a boy growing up in Central Africa I read all Haggard's African novels. ~ Wilbur Smith

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

There was only the cemetery itself, spread out in the moonlight like a soft grey hallucination, a stony wilderness of Victorian melancholy. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

He takes the beer and sets it on the floor. "I've never been into guys. So, this attraction to you is a little weird for me."
I try to ease his mind by telling him that a lot of straight guys have at least one homosexual experience in their lifetime and that it's pretty normal.
"Yeah… that's what I hear."
"So don't over-think it. Just do me."
He laughs, runs his hand down my arms, over my chest, and follows my happy trail down to my pubes. ~ Giorge Leedy

The Victorians lost a few workers in everything they built, rather like a votive offering. ~ Christopher Fowler

No flirting, wicked girl. I know I'm your type." "I can't help it," she said. "I spread for Roman collars. What ~ Tiffany Reisz

Every dictionary contains a world. I open a book of thieves' slang from Queen Anne's reign and they have a hundred words for swords, for wenches, and for being hanged. They did no die, they danced on nothing. Then I peek into any one of my rural Victorian dictionaries, compiled by a lonely clergyman, with words for coppices, thickets, lanes, diseases of horses and innumerable terms for kinds of eel. They gave names to the things of their lives, and their lives are collected in these dictionaries – every detail and joke and belief. I have their worlds piled up on my desk. ~ Mark Forsyth

I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores. ~ Charles Bukowski

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

When you think about Puritanism, you must begin by getting rid of the slang term 'Puritanism' as applied to Victorian religious hypocrisy. This does not apply to seventeenth-century Puritanism. ~ Leland Ryken

Any knowledge of homosexuality I might have had would have gone back to Victorian times. All those novels. You probably skirted under my radar, because you weren't wearing hoop skirts and high button boots. ~ Ivan E. Coyote

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

What, no flirting?" I asked, trying to buy time. "Aren't you going to at least try to be sexy? Think of all those vampire fans out there - they'd be so disappointed." I pulled out my silver knife. Probably should have paid more attention during my knife training. "Tell you what. Let me go and I promise not to tell anyone that you aren't suave. ~ Kiersten White

I shan't mind if you don't," he agreed. "But I'll not let you go, Prudence. Til not pester you, but know this: I will wait until you choose to listen to your heart."
"Pshaw." It was a feeble effort. She took a deep breath and tried again. "Humbug! How can you presume to know my heart?"
He smiled a slow, devastating smile. "You are my heart." He lifted her hand and kissed it. "And our hearts beat in tune. I know it - I, who used not to believe in such things. And you know it. ~ Anne Gracie

When he entered the drawing-room she was sitting alone, in a large, low chair, made without arms, so as to admit the full expansion of her dress, but hollowed and rounded at the back, so as to afford her the support that was necessary to her. She had barely spoke three words since she had left the dining-room, but the time had not passed heavily with her. ~ Anthony Trollope

It was a "Come As Your Childhood Ambition" theme party. You know: vets, pilots, ballet
dancers…I really did always want to be a librarian.'
'You're actually just a big dork, aren't you?' he says.
'A big sexy dork,' I correct him, taking a sip of my drink. 'And that's MISS Big Sexy Dork to
you.' (Oh, hush. I know it's obvious flirting. It just came out.)
'Cocky. So cocky,' he says, shaking his head.
I'm not sure what to say to this. Cocky is certainly not how I'd describe myself.
'See? You're not even bothering to reply. Cocky. Fine, I'll talk. Even though you haven't asked
me, I would have come as a dog. I thought I was a dog, actually, till I was five. I would only eat froma bowl on the floor next to our real dog, Scooby, and I wee-ed against trees whenever I could. ~ Gemma Burgess

I don't know if anyone's ever told you this", he begins. He doesn't blush, and his eyes don't dart away. Instead I find myself staring into a pair of oceans - one perfect, the other blemished by that tiny ripple. "You're very attractive."
I've been complimented on my appearance before. But never in his tone of voice. Of all the things he's said, I don't know why this catches me off guard. But it startles me so much that without thinking I blurt out, "I could say the same about you." I pause. "In case you didn't know."
A slow grin spreads across his face. "Oh, trust me. I know. ~ Marie Lu

The morgue is a Victorian update of a system established by Alfred the Great. It's the place where certain deaths are resolved - those where the cause is unclear or is the result of some intended or accidental violence. The bodies are almost always victims in some way - of crime, suicides and car crashes, but also victims of loneliness. It's where you go if you die alone in your flat and your body lies undisturbed for days. It's where you go if no one knew you were dying and no GP attended your final hours. It's where you go if no loved one held your hand as you slipped away. In one way or another, then, all the people who pass through this room are the people who die screaming. ~ Stephen Armstrong

Damn, cher, you still smell like a blossom. Been so long since I've seen a flower that I'd nearly forgotten what they smelled like." He took a lock of my hair, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. "You're dressing up and using expensive perfume? Ole Jack senses a trap. Consider me snared. ~ Kresley Cole

Find depressing his determination to make his characters suffer even when a little common sense on both his part and theirs could avoid it. Tess is one of the most irritating young women in Victorian fiction. Won ~ P.D. James

Very few people know loyalty anymore." "Do you?" I asked, needing for my own piece of mind to know. "Did I maybe start flirting with Shelly when I was still dating Meg in high school? Yeah, I did. I was sixteen and stupid as fuck. But I grew up. I watched countless families get torn apart by infidelity. I have had to comfort dozens of crying women in my office when I handed them the pictures they paid me to take. And I've gotten to witness the awful thing that happens when they stop crying." "What's that?" "They make up their minds to never let themselves get hurt like that again. See, cheating doesn't just screw up that one relationship, it tends to screw up every single one later because the person gets bitter or scared or distrusting. It's a sad fucking thing to see. And it's not something I am ever willing to do to a woman." He paused and I let those words sink in. ~ Jessica Gadziala

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

Conscience was the barmaid of the Victorian soul. Recognizing that human beings were fallible and that their failings, though regrettable, must be humored, conscience would permit, rather ungraciously perhaps, the indulgence of a number of carefully selected desires. ~ C.E.M. Joad

I'm such a tease and you're such a flirt Routines and schedules A drug that'll kill you ~ Thom Yorke

Courting sometimes has the unpleasant side effect of marriage. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The old Victorian laws against homosexuality were still on the statute books until the early 1990s. As a gay man living in Ireland, I and people like me found it easy to feel less than citizens. ~ Colm Toibin

What is this? He has a sensation of touching glass. He doesn't know if they are talking about nothing or making code for the deepest meanings. ~ John Updike

Steampunk is Victorian science fiction ~ G.D. Falksen

I feel like there's a genuine hole in me. The little death, almost. I need stimulation. I used to need physical stimulation constantly, whether that be from listening to the sound of my own voice, or flirting with guys or girls. I'm not bisexual, but that moment when you realise someone likes you – it's the best feeling in the world. If you could bottle it.. ~ Matt Healy

One character all messages had in common was vague generality. "Fly away with me," a tussie-mussie might suggest, but never "Meet me at the railway depot at six-thirty. ~ Geraldine Adamich Laufer

As we strolled into the hospital, I couldn't help thinking about Maroon 5's "Harder to Breathe" because I was having a difficult time staying calm. I had been kidnapped and beaten senseless by an agent of Lucifer, and yet the white coats the doctors wore scared me just as badly. The men who had taken me from my mother wore those same damned lab coats. Every time I saw one, it awakened a dormant fear inside me - fear that I'd be dragged away from someone I loved again, fear that I'd be placed into the waiting hands of another horrible person. It would never truly go away.
Michael's shoulder bumped mine, which shook me out of my thoughts. I glanced at him. "What?"
"You're frowning."
"Am I supposed to be smiling right now?"
He faced forward, looking at our reflection in the elevator doors. "No, but you look like you're about to bolt at any second."
I watched the digital numbers change one by one as we rose up to the right floor, fiddling with the rosary in the pocket of my leather jacket. Somehow, the beads had a calming effect on me. "I'm fine."
"Hard ass."
A tiny smirk touched my lips. "Stop thinking about my butt. You're an archangel."
He grinned, but didn't reply. ~ Kyoko M.

Flirting all starts with eye contact! You can tell a girl is into you if she's across the room and still making eye contact with you. ~ Chandler Parsons

Every style seems completely appropriate to its epoch. We cannot imagine Madame de Pompadour, or the Empress Josephine, or the early Victorian lady in anything but the clothes she actually wore. Each represents completely the ideals of her time: elegant artificiality or post-Revolutionary morals, or the prudery of the rising middle class. ~ James Laver

You have a spine of steel and fire in your eyes, Rosalie. To have such a quality, one must be shaken to the foundation of one's soul and put back together. I want to know how you emerged from hell made of steel and fire. ~ Moriah Densley

Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea. ~ Mary Elizabeth Braddon