Victorian Quotes - Page 5

• Many people have compared me to the Victorian adventure writer, Rider Haggard. I accept that as a compliment. As a boy growing up in Central Africa I read all Haggard's African novels.

  Walter Smith

  Growing Up, Adventure, Boys

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• [The] BBC was known as Auntie suggesting someone prudish and Victorian and that she still is on some days. On others she's a champagne-soaked floozie, her skirts in disarray, her mind in the gutter, and the mixture can be quite wonderful.

  Morley Safer

  Mind, Gutters, Auntie

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• As we have seen, WikiLeaks is a robust organization. During my time in solitary confinement in the basement of a Victorian prison, we continue to release, our media partners continued to write stories. The important revelations from this material continue to come out. We have approximately 2,000 cables into 250,000.

  Julian Assange

  Writing, Media, Organization

  "WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Interview". Interview with Matt Lauer, www.nbclearn.com. December 17, 2010.

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• Well, this is a story about books." About books?" About accursed books, about a man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of anovel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind." You talk like the jacket blurb of a Victorian novel, Daniel." That's probably because I work in a bookshop and I've seen too many. But this is a true story.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Dream, Betrayal, Book

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon (2005). “The Shadow of the Wind”, p.171, Penguin

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• We think of mortality so little these days... I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones. Remember, pilgrim, as you pass by, As you are now so once was I: As I am so will you be.

  Tana French

  Determination, Tombstone, Thinking

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• She liked Victorian novels. They were the only kind of novel you could read while eating an apple.

  Stella Gibbons

  Apples, Kind, Eating

  Stella Gibbons (1977). “Cold comfort farm”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Simply put, if you are a Wayward Victorian Girl, I'll find you.

  Emilie Autumn

  Girl, Ifs

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• The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her "beauty.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Ovaries, Her Beauty

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

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• What if all those strange and unexplainable bends in history were the result of supernatural interference? At which point I asked myself, what's the weirdest most eccentric historical phenomenon of them all? Answer:the Great British Empire. Clearly, one tiny little island could only conquer half the known world with supernatural aid. Those absurd Victorian manners and ridiculous fashions were obviously dictated by vampires. And, without a doubt, the British army regimental system functions on werewolf pack dynamics.

  Gail Carriger

  Fashion, Army, Islands

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• One of my most sentimental items is my grandmother's engagement ring that my mom gave me a few years ago. It's a Victorian-style setting that's closed in the back, so it doesn't sparkle the way diamonds do now. I wear it as a pendant.

  Georgina Chapman

  Mom, Grandmother, Years

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• But I think the most harmful change brought about by Victorian science in our attitude to nature lies in the demand that our relation with it must be purposive, industrious, always seeking greater knowledge.

  John Fowles

  Nature, Attitude, Lying

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• Certainly, Doctor. Let's talk about your chair. Victorian?

  Eoin Colfer

  Doctors, Chairs, Artemis Fowl

  Eoin Colfer (2002). “Artemis fowl: the Arctic incident”

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• Here I am, ninety years old and ready for the cooling board, using a brand new Macintosh computer, and there you sit, twenty-two and gorgeous, fresh as a new peach, yet scrawling on a yellow legal pad like an old maid in a Victorian romance.

  Stephen King

  Years, Here I Am, Two

  Stephen King (2005). “The Colorado Kid”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

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• Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.

  Margaret Atwood

  Literature, Harvard, Subjects

  "Margaret Atwood interview: 'Go three days without water and you don't have any human rights. Why? Because you're dead'". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. November 27, 2010.

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• I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly believe this.

  Margaret Atwood

  Believe, Expression, Novelists

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• One of Dickens' biggest influences was the growth of London as a Victorian city, and the extremes being created as it expanded.

  Danny Boyle

  Cities, Growth, London

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, film.avclub.com. November 26, 2008.

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• Journalists are always calling my features Edwardian or Victorian, whatever that means. I am small, and people were smaller in those times. I'm pale and sickly-looking. I look fragile-like a doll. But sometimes I just wish I had less of a particular look, one that was more versatile.

  Helena Bonham Carter

  Mean, People, Wish

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• We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Baby, Long, Eras

  W. Somerset Maugham (2017). “Plays Volume One”, p.278, Random House

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• I want to lead the Victorian life, surrounded by exquisite clutter.

  Freddie Mercury

  Want, Clutter, Exquisite

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• The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

  Terry Pratchett

  Goodbye, Grandchildren, Thinking

  "Discworld's Terry Pratchett On Death And Deciding". Interview with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. August 11, 2011.

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• I love big, bold, truthful theater - the tradition of Victorian theater.

  Harold Prince

  Truthful, Tradition, Theater

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• Libraries are not just for reading in, but for sociable thinking, exploring, exchanging ideas and falling in love. They were never silent. Technology will not change that, for even in the starchiest heyday of Victorian self-improvement, libraries were intended to be meeting places of the mind, recreational as well as educational.

  Ben Macintyre

  Falling In Love, Educational, Reading

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• In her early days she had that beatific expression characteristic of Victorian prettiness - like a sheep painted by Raphael.

  James Agate

  Women, Sheep, Expression

  James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 4, Ego 5, Ego 6”

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• I read the best works of some of the best satirists, and indeed best writers from the beginning of the Victorian era to about the 1960s. If you want to be a blacksmith, you go and watch the blacksmith working, and you work out what the blacksmith does.

  Terry Pratchett

  Work Out, Doe, Watches

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• The man Dickens, whom the world at large thought it knew, stood for all the Victorian virtues - probity, kindness, hard work, sympathy for the down-trodden, the sanctity of domestic life - even as his novels exposed the violence, hypocrisy, greed, and cruelty of the Victorian age.

  Robert Gottlieb

  Kindness, Hard Work, Men

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