19th-century Novelist Quotes

The sun, we say, is the cause of heat, but the heat is the sun, hence on this window-ledge.

William Hale White

Blue dusk, that brings the dewy hours, Brings thee, of graceless form in smooth, Dark stumbler at the roots of flowers, Flaccid, inert, uncouth.

And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after the brain that sent them forth has crumpled into dust, how vitally important it must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them with the keenest possible restraint.

Algernon Blackwood

Kate and Mercer gave each other a smile with a future in it.

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.'

Katherine Thurston

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

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.

She said, 'God knows they owe me nought,
I tossed them to the foaming sea,
I tossed them to the howling wastes,
Yet still their love comes home to me.'

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

The formidable power of geography determines the character and performance of a people.

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

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

Harold Bell Wright

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.

Julia Caroline Dorr

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

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

Enough has been unrolled to demand your sympathy and aid.

Harriet E. Wilson

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

Annie Fellows Johnston

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

Robert Hugh Benson

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

A man would rather fail according to his own ideas than succeed according to another's.

Kate Langley Bosher

In Europe, a product must be good, or it will not sell in competition with other products; with you, it is enough to say that it is good, often enough and sufficiently loudly. The keenest competition is not in the making of things but in the advertising of them!

Sparkling and bright in liquid light
Does the wine our goblets gleam in;
With hue as red as the rosy bed
Which a bee would choose to dream in.
Then fill to-night, with hearts as light
To loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim
And break on the lips while meeting.

Charles Fenno Hoffman

There is no merit in a special talent unless its exercise is of use to others.

The essence of art that is at all noble is the DREAM, and this dream dwells only upon what is distant, absent, vanished, unattainable.

Georges Rodenbach

Acorns may be food for hogs or rise into magnificent oaks, as the dice of chance decree.