Victorian Quotes - Page 2

• When you think about Puritanism, you must begin by getting rid of the slang term 'Puritanism' as applied to Victorian religious hypocrisy. This does not apply to seventeenth-century Puritanism.

  Leland Ryken

  Religious, Thinking, Hypocrisy

  Leland Ryken (2010). “Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were”, p.20, Harper Collins

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• My grandmother flew only once in her life, and that was the day she and her new husband ascended into the skies of Victorian London in the wicker basket of a hot-air balloon. They were soon to emigrate to Canada, and the aerial ride was meant to be a last view of their beloved England.

  Alan Bradley

  Husband, Grandmother, Air

  37 Copy quote

• The Bible does not tell us that life in this world will be fair. Evil and sin are not Victorian gentlemen; they do not play fair.

  D. A. Carson

  Play, Evil, Gentleman

  D. A. Carson (2006). “How Long, O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil”, p.57, Baker Academic

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• You have to put yourself to one side and get away from the 'Victorian poet' model where you are the universe. You have to do everything you can to take your ego out of the equation.

  Peter Wolf

  Ego, Sides, Poet

  4 Copy quote

• If you walked around like David Bowie in 1973 in Reading, you'd get beaten up. The 1970s in a small town was more like the 1950s.. and that's the truth. The backdrop was probably Victorian.

  Ricky Gervais

  Reading, Towns, Small Town

  "Cemetery Junction - Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more I think you over, the more it comes home to me what an unmitigated Middle Victorian ass you are!

  H. L. Mencken

  Home, Thinking, History

  5 Copy quote

• I'm in the early stages of a film called 'Freezing Time' about Eadweard Muybridge, the Victorian photographer who was really the forefather of cinema. Digital animators still treat his images like the Bible. He was a very obsessed man.

  Andy Serkis

  Men, Cinema, Digital

  "Q&A: King of Mo-Cap Andy Serkis on Digital Acting and Gollum's Oscar Diss". Interview with Steve Silverman, www.wired.com. September 14, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Then years back, when I moved to California, I happened to see a book about fashions of 19th-century Victorian England, only four pages of which was devoted to the dress of the working class.

  Bill Vaughan

  Fashion, Book, Years

  7 Copy quote

• Not being one to calculate or look ahead, I had not stopped to think, when boys started paying attention to me, that the cup might be dashed from my lips, though experience should have taught me that dashing cups from lips was the way Victorian parents got most of their exercise.

  Margaret Halsey

  Exercise, Boys, Thinking

  Margaret Halsey (1977). “No Laughing Matter: The Autobiography of a Wasp”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art and Entertainment are the same thing, in that the more deeply and genuinely entertaining a work is, the better art it is. To imply that Art is something heavy and solemn and dull, and Entertainment is modest but jolly and popular, is neo-Victorian idiocy at its worst.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Art, Dull, Entertainment

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.232, Ultramarine Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For those who reject it, the Victorian experience is something to feel embarrassed about, to apologise for, to escape from, and never to repeat. But to those who remain enthralled, it is a fabulous story of oustanding success and splendid achievement, by comparison with which Britain's 20th century records seems at best unimpressive, and often distinctly lacklustre.

  David Cannadine

  Achievement, Stories, Records

  4 Copy quote

• In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over the last 700 years - starting with Beowulf and Chaucer and working his way up through the Renaissance, the Victorian era and on into the 20th century.

  Frederick Lenz

  Writing, Years, Style

  4 Copy quote

• Years ago I had a house in Sussex, it was like Arcadia, with an old Victorian bridge, a pond and the Downs.

  Nicolas Roeg

  Years, Bridges, House

  "His brilliant career". Interview with Jason Wood, www.theguardian.com. June 2, 2005.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Scripture the visitation of an angel is always alarming; it has to begin by saying 'Fear not.' The Victorian angel looks as if it were going to say, 'There, there.' The literary symbols are more dangerous [than sculptures and pictures] because they are not so easily recognized as symbolical. Those of Dante are best. Before his angels we sink in awe.

  Kathryn Lindskoog

  Angel, Looks, Sculpture

  9 Copy quote

• Every style seems completely appropriate to its epoch. We cannot imagine Madame de Pompadour, or the Empress Josephine, or the early Victorian lady in anything but the clothes she actually wore. Each represents completely the ideals of her time: elegant artificiality or post-Revolutionary morals, or the prudery of the rising middle class.

  James Laver

  Fashion, Class, Clothes

  10 Copy quote

• Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian “improving” literature. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.

  Neil Gaiman

  Children, Book, Reading

  "Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming" by Neil Gaiman, www.theguardian.com. October 15, 2013.

  44 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you agree with me that a poem can be as bountiful as a rich Victorian narrative, and as wise... then you'll want to join me here in the Wow, I Like No Need of Sympathy Club. Your membership fee is the same as your membership privileges: this book.

  Albert Goldbarth

  Wise, Book, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• I was brought up very conservatively. My father was positively Victorian - I wasn't even allowed to wear my hair down.

  Britt Ekland

  Father, Hair, Positively

  7 Copy quote

• Vampires are so old that they don't need to impress anyone anymore. They're comfortable in their own skin. It's this enigmatic strength that's very romantic and old-fashioned. I think it goes back to something of a Victorian attitude of finding a strong man who's going to look after his woman.

  Stephen Moyer

  Strong, Attitude, Men

  53 Copy quote

• A village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to conquer the earth. Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicated to the sayings of Confucius.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Country, Pain, Ignorance

  "Main Street". Book by Sinclair Lewis, 1920.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• My work is a fusion of personal experiences and influences - moody atmospheres, victorian-inspired couture, and timeless elements all laced with clandestine symbolism. The figures I paint exist in their own esoteric realm and time, and each painting offers a glimpse into their anomalous world.

  Lori Earley

  Symbolism, Atmosphere, Fusion

  Artist Statement, www.loriearley.com.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Victorian society was homogeneous without being homogenized. It was, to paraphrase the epigram about Parliament, a society of extreme eccentrics who agreed so well that they could afford to differ.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Parliament, Wells, Paraphrase

  Kenneth Rexroth, Bradford Morrow (1989). “More Classics Revisited”, p.120, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't like the definition 'war correspondent'. It is history, not journalism, that has condemned the Middle East to war. I think 'war correspondent' smells a bit, reeks of false romanticism: it has too much of the whiff of Victorian reporters who would view battles from hilltops in the company of ladies, immune to suffering, only occasionally glancing towards the distant pop-pop of cannon fire.

  Robert Fisk

  War, Thinking, Views

  "The Great War for Civilization". Book by Robert Fisk, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of my ambitions has been to go back to what those great authors were doing then ... to bridge that sensibility of old Victorian Gothic tales and reconstruct them in a modern way.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Ambition, Bridges, Way

  4 Copy quote

• I wish you could see the two cats drowsing side by side in a Victorian nursing chair, their paws, their ears, their tails complementarily adjusted, their blue eyes blinking open on a single thought of when I shall remember it's their supper time. They might have been composed by Bach for two flutes.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Cat, Eye, Nursing

  6 Copy quote