19th-century Novelist Quotes

The Arctic Ocean encircles with a belt of eternal ice the desert confines of Siberia and North America--the uttermost limits of the Old and New worlds, separated by the narrow, channel, known as Behring's Straits.

I think the hardest thing in life is when we see those we love turn down a wrong path, and when no entreaty will induce them to retrace their steps.

Rosa Nouchette Carey

Love, is it? First you lose your appetite, then you lose your tongue, then you take leave of your senses, and that's love!

How to divide ourselves fairly between ourselves and the rest of the world is the hardest question we ever have to answer.

Edith Kellogg Dunton

Unconsciously we grow to look upon the sick as people of another world.

Is that all? The mountain in labor has brought forth a mouse.

May Agnes Fleming

Nature never says anything to a child. To read its message one must look at it with eyes already old.

When Christian theology becomes traditionalism and men fail to hold and use it as they do a living language, it becomes an obstacle, not a help to religious conviction. To the greatest of the early Fathers and the great scholastics theology was a language which, like all language, had a grammar and a vocabulary from the past, but which they used to express all the knowledge and experience of their own time as well.

There is no power in nature which from nothing could have made the universe, and none which could reduce the universe to nothing:

In every man's heart there is a devil, but we do not know the man as bad until the devil is roused.

James Oliver Curwood

There was a thick carpet upon the floor, a sofa piled with cushions in one corner, and several other articles of furniture. The walls, however, were uncovered and were stained with damp. A great pink fungus stood out within a few inches of the bed, a grim mixture of exquisite colouring and loathsome imperfections. The atmosphere was fetid.

E. Phillips Oppenheim

O Time, thou that consumest all things! O envious age, thou destroyest all things and devourest all things with the hard teeth of the years, little by little, in slow death!

Nature is a good mother, after all, in our latitude. She does not coddle and over-indulge her children, but rewards their love abundantly, invigorates them if they dwell in her presence, and develops mind and muscle, heart and soul, if they obey her laws and seek to know her well.

Edward Payson Roe

We, who have had tender, perfect mothers, would like to make it law that the other kind should always be called 'she-parents,' or 'female progenitors,' or any other descriptive title, but not profane the sacred name of mother!

Florence L. Barclay

Sunday, that day so tedious to the triflers of earth, so full of beautiful reposes of calmness and strength for the earnest and heavenly minded.

Maria Jane McIntosh

London is a city that offers all kinds of temptations, and whenever I go for a walk I discover things that I would like to bring back as souvenirs. But my resources are very limited. I cannot buy anything, and I make a point of taking my walks a good distance from these riches.

Natsume Sōseki

I never was lost. I was bewildered right bad once for as much as a week, but not lost.

Elizabeth Madox Roberts

The madness of the eyes is the lure of the abyss. Sirens lurk in the dark depths of the pupils as they lurk at the bottom of the sea, that I know for sure - but I have never encountered them, and I am searching still for the profound and plaintive gazes in whose depths I might be able, like Hamlet redeemed, to drown the Ophelia of my desire.

There shall be wings!...if the accomplishment be not for me, tis for some other. It shall be done. The spirit cannot lie; and Man, who shall know all and who shall have wings, shall indeed be as a god.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky

Every time we mention the world, we must remember it is going to end.

The moon drowsed between the trees like a great yellow moth.

Hallie Erminie Rives

True love does not paralyze, but doubles the high qualities of man.

He had lost life by making knowledge its ultimate end, and was still delving on, with never a laugh and never a cheer, feeding his emaciated heart on the locusts and wild honey of entomology and botany...

George Washington Cable

And I wasn't a journalist any more than I was a trained nurse.

The moon of a bright silver, which dazzles by its shining, illumines a world which surely is no longer ours; for it resembles in nothing what may be seen in other lands.