19th-century Novelist Quotes

For true happiness, sane enjoyment, you must look to the country, not town. Only you want one true heart beside you with which to enjoy it!

Civilization without its appliances is weaker than barbarism.

Theodore Winthrop
Theodore Winthrop
A happy childhood is one of the best gifts that parents have it in their power to bestow.

I send thee pansies while the year is young,
Yellow as sunshine, purple as the night;
Flowers of remembrance, ever fondly sung
By all the chiefest of the Sons of Light.

Only virtue has powerful arguments against pessimism.

Leopoldo Alas
Leopoldo Alas
They sat and combed their beautiful hair,
Their long, bright tresses, one by one,
As they laughed and talked in the chamber there,
After the revel was done.

If a man's innate self-respect will not save him from habitual, disgusting intoxication, all the female influences in the universe would not avail. Man's will, like woman's, is stronger than the affection, and, once subjugated by vice, all eternal influences will be futile.

When a man or a woman holds fast to youth, even if successfully, there is something of the pitiful and the tragic involved. It is the everlasting struggle of the soul to retain the joy of earth, whose fleeing distinguishes it from heaven, and whose retention is not accomplished without an inner knowledge of its futility.

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
People and dogs and cows are born to be what they are. They may cover it up for a long time, but it will come out sooner or later.

Take one of my favourite experiments, for example. I see a little ball rattling around in a wheel. Where will that ball stop? You, being less intellectual than I, don't care where it stops I do. Instantly my scientific curiosity is aroused; I reason logically; I evolve an opinion; I back that opinion; and I remain busy and poor.

Robert W. Chambers
Robert W. Chambers
Even if a thing is not beautiful, it is living art if it is someone's experience. To do a thing as nobody else could have done it—if you can wrench that out of yourself—is style.

It is rather calming to remember that you really couldn't have foreseen what is happening to you.

When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.

The union of the family lies in love; and love is the only reconciliation of authority and liberty.

Robert Hugh Benson
Robert Hugh Benson
To callow wings no flight is too high to attempt. At sixteen all things are possible.

Enough has been unrolled to demand your sympathy and aid.

He that feareth is a slave, were he never so rich, were he never so powerful. But he that is without fear is king of all the world.

Eric Rücker Eddison
Eric Rücker Eddison
Astronomy is certainly an alluring science; set an astronomer before a telescope, and an overwhelming attraction draws his soul away through the tube up into heaven, and leaves his body without mundane interests.

Sabine Baring-Gould
Sabine Baring-Gould
And the stately lilies stand Fair in the silvery light, Like saintly vestals, pale in prayer; Their pure breath sanctifies the air, As its fragrance fills the night.

There is a bond of fellowship in sorrow that knows no conventionality.

Harold Bell Wright
Harold Bell Wright
There is almost no limit to the possibilities of the imagination, but to get the full power of it, one must trust one's imagination. If you say to yourself constantly, as the mother says to the child, 'But this is only play; this is not real,' you never can make real the things you have created in thought.

The gorilla is a strict vegetarian like the elephant and buffalo — three of the four most dangerous animals in Africa. It behooves one to walk softly with vegetarians.

In this curious world there are certain beings to whom it is given to say of all things with naïve faith, not 'I shall seek,' but 'I shall find.'

I thought there should in truth be heavy damages for malpractice on human souls.

Owen Wister
Owen Wister
Though he might be more humble, there is no police like Holmes.