19th-century Novelist Quotes

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind. Even a head wind is better than none. No man ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm.

I always have a pad of paper and a pencil within reach, to catch on the wing this turn of phrase which strikes me as felicitous, that idea which I hope to be able to examine more closely in the light of day.

Roger Martin du Gard

To offer a man friendship when love is in his heart is like giving a loaf of bread to one who is dying of thirst.

Frank Frankfort Moore

If only life were one long crisis, everyone would be perfect.

Angela Thirkell

Everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence.

Mourning Dove (author)

We age inevitably:
The old joys fade and are gone:
And at last comes equanimity and the flame burning clear.

James Oppenheim

We are not here in this world to drift like seaweed. Whatever intelligence we have, it is our duty to drive to the utmost.

Blanche Willis Howard

The politician is an acrobat; he keeps his balance by doing the opposite of what he says.

Maurice Barrès

The old creep out at the churchyard gate, while the young bound in at the front door.

Elizabeth Charles

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

Margaret Widdemer

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Augusta Jane Evans

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.

Only virtue has powerful arguments against pessimism.

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.

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

Mary Cholmondeley

Civilization without its appliances is weaker than barbarism.

Theodore Winthrop

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!

Ellen Buckingham Mathews

We are very aware that we are in the middle of a war. But we are still continuing our calm and monotonous lives.

My love for my father has never been touched or approached by any other love. I hold him in my heart of hearts as a man apart from all other men, as one apart from all other beings.

Her own excited feelings had magnified it in length, and breadth, and height — had made a molehill into a mountain...

Ellen Wood (author)

Every evening words, not stars, light the sky. No rest in life like life itself.