19th-century Author Quotes

I never like anyone till I've seen him at his worst.

A church is an interesting place once you get the parson and the people out of it. Real music can get in then, and a real God! Nothing flibertigibbet about religion then.

Mazo de la Roche

Thou hast only to follow the wall far enough and there will be a door in it.

Marguerite de Angeli

It ought to be a crime for any woman to have children that writes books.

Josephine Daskam Bacon

In times of uncertainty, wait. Always, if you have any doubt, wait. Do not force yourself to any action. If you have a restraint in your spirit, wait until all is clear, and do not go against it.

Germany, Germany above everything,
Above everything in the world,
When, for protection and defense, it always
takes a brotherly stand together.
From the Meuse to the Neman,
From the Adige to the Belt,

August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben

Your tiny hand is frozen, let me warm it in mine.

Giuseppe Giacosa

Nature admits of no permanence in the relation between man and woman. It is only man's egoism that wants to keep woman like some buried treasure. All endeavors to introduce permanence in love, the most changeable thing in this changeable human existence, have gone shipwreck in spite of religious ceremonies, vows, and legalities.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Happy is he who can forget what cannot be changed.

The ancients waited for cherry blossoms, grieved when they were gone, and lamented their passing in countless poems. How very ordinary the poems had seemed to Sachiko when she read them as a girl, but now she knew, as well as one could know, that grieving over fallen cherry blossoms was more than a fad or convention.

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

Crises of expression and spasms of eros:
that's the man of today,
the inside a vacuum,
the continuity of personality
provided by his suit,
which with stout cloth might be good for ten years.

Summertime
And the livin' is easy,
Fish are jumpin',
And the cotton is high.
Oh, your daddy's rich,
And your ma is good lookin';
So hush, little baby,
Don' yo' cry.

Beyond living and dreaming there is something more important: waking up.

Antonio Machado

Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,
Who was the Future, died full long ago.
Knowledge which is the Past is folly.

Trumbull Stickney

My personal history would not be disappointing to readers, but it is my own affair which I want to keep to myself. I am in fact in no way more important than is the typesetter for my books, the man who works the mill; no more important than the man who binds my books and the woman who wraps them and the scrubwoman who cleans up the office.

To joyously savor one single instant of initial life I seek an innocent country

Giuseppe Ungaretti

When I hear the word "culture"... I reach for my pistol.

An age being mathematical, these flowers Of linear stalks and spheroid blooms were prized.

Just stand aside and watch yourself go by; Think of yourself as 'he' instead of 'I'.

Strickland Gillilan

Heresy is the lifeblood of religions. It is faith that begets heretics. There are no heresies in a dead religion.

If there is one beast in all the loathsome fauna of civilization I hate and despise it is a man of the world.

Henry Arthur Jones

In the mind all things are written in pictures - there is no alphabetical combination of letters and words; all things are pictures and symbols.

Richard Jefferies

Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! —Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Leave off the agony, leave off style,
Unless you've got money by you all the while.

Extreme vanity sometimes hides under the garb of ultra modesty.

Anna Brownell Jameson