19th-century Novelist Quotes

Oh, that in religion, as in everything else, man would judge his brother man by his own heart; and as dear, as precious as his peculiar creed may be to him, believe so it is with the faith of his brother!

When a writer admits that he has an affection for something which he has written, it is high time to pray for his soul.

I have been much afflicted again lately by visitors... and they gave me to understand that if they had had the arranging of the garden it would have been finished long ago - whereas I don't believe a garden is ever finished. They have all gone now, thank heaven.

Elizabeth von Arnim

That indescribable expression peculiar to people who hope they have not been asleep, but know they have.

Helen Hunt Jackson

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.

I must go to the laboratory and look into a little matter of acids and salts and alkalis. I've burned a hole as big as a plate in the front of my chemistry apron, with hydrochloric acid. If the theory worked, I ought to be able to neutralize that hole with good strong ammonia, oughtn't I?

It was an old, old, old, old lady,
And a boy who was half-past three;
And the way they played together
Was beautiful to see.

Henry Cuyler Bunner

An hypothesis is only a habit - a habit of looking through a glass of one peculiar colour, which imparts its hue to all around it.

Frederick Marryat

Pine woods... are monotonous because the trees are nearly all pines and one tree is like another, and their tall, bare trunks wall you in, and their dark stiff foliage is like a roof above you.

William Henry Hudson

The happiest people I have known in this world have been the Saints-and, after these, the men and women who get immediate and conscious enjoyment from little things.

To be sympathetic without discrimination is so very debilitating.

If you give a man a fish, he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish, you do him a good turn.

Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie

How can a man who has once strayed into Heaven ever hope to make terms with the earth!

Kindnesses have wings and roots... wings that never droop, and roots that never die.

Mary Louisa Molesworth

Awake thee, my Lady-Love! Wake thee, and rise! The sun through the bower peeps Into thine eyes.

No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.

No study is likely to be fruitful of results if carried on without a system. The majority of those who pursue knowledge for its own sake pursue it after an aimless and desultory fashion.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay

We must go for a day in the country and when surrounded by the gay twittering of the birds and the smell of the cows I will lay my suit at her feet and he waved his arm wildly at the gay thought.

It is an easy thing to call names; any fool is equal to that... and the weapon of vituperation is generally used by those who lack brains for argument or are upon the wrong side.

It is the duty of a writer to protect and argue in favour of those who are oppressed, sufferers, whether an individual or a group deprived.

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

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

Marguerite de Angeli

Time is really nothing but a huge circle. You divide a circle of three hundred and sixty degrees into twenty-four hours, and you get fifteen degrees of arc that is the equivalent of each hour.

Erle Stanley Gardner

Madame Schmid belonged to that large class of persons who believe that a man who engages in any form of art is necessarily a loafer.

Molly Elliot Seawell

Memories do not change, and change is the law of existence. If our dead, the closest, the most beloved, were to return to us after a long absence and instead of the old, familiar trees were to find in our souls English gardens and stone walls - that is to say, other loves, other tastes, other interests, they would gaze upon us sadly and tenderly for a moment, wiping away their tears, and then return to their tombs to rest.

Teresa de la Parra