Victorian Society Quotes

“Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea.”
― Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret

“Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite ... Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families ... and you have no idea ... what games goes on!”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

“But who are they? (opium-eaters) Reader, I am sorry to say, a very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago, by computing, at that time, the number of those in one small class of English society (the class of men distinguished for talents, or of eminent station), who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters; such for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent ___, the late dean of ___; Lord ___; Mr ___, the philosopher; a late under-secretary of state … Now, if one class, comparatively so limited, could furnish so many scores of cases (and that within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a natural inference, that the entire population of England would furnish a proportionable number.”
― Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

“How could some white men so willfully and selfishly shatter all efforts for peace? And why did men always have to make war?
Was honor truly worth more than life itself? More than love, more than family, more than anything at all?
Painful memories of Frederick, her late husband, tugged at her heart. As much as she had mourned him, there had been times when she had resented him for going to war so willingly and enthusiastically, leaving her behind to raise Willie all by herself, at the mercy of his vitriolic mother in Boston.
“But what of their families?” The words burst out of her. “Their wives and children? It’s always the weak, the helpless who pay the price for you men believing you cannot settle your disputes any other way.” She shot him a displeased look. “You think yourselves so brave, strong, and invincible with your guns as you crave glory and honor! You go to war as if it were a game, an amusing adventure! But you don’t waste much thought on those you leave behind, unprotected and without prospects for their future in case you don’t return.”
Surprised by her outburst, Rénier stared at her.
“You’re right, Madame,” he then conceded. “It’s the women and children who pay the price. But they’d suffer just the same if their fathers, husbands, and brothers surrendered without a fight and resigned themselves to their fate.”
― Melanie Nova, The Avant-gardiste: Breaking Barriers

“It was a popular belief in Victorian society that women, with their mercurial natures and lesser brains, could not have the same quality of friendship that men did. Only men could have truly honest and high-minded relationships.
Daisy thought that was rubbish. She and the other wallflowers... well, former wallflowers... shared a bond of deep, caring trust. They helped each other, encouraged each other with no hint of competition or jealousy. Daisy loved Annabelle and Evie nearly as much as she did Lillian. She could easily envision them all in their later years, prattling about their grandchildren over tea and biscuits, traveling together as a silver-hair horde of tart-tongued old ladies.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Scandal in Spring

“Notoriety is by no means a death sentence in the world of art.”
― Laura Purcell, The Corset

“I might set at the window in that tower there my chest covered in diamonds, and gaze over the hills, remembering my lost love.
A romantic picture, but utterly stupid. I should be bored after an hour.”
― Laura Purcell, The Corset

“Existence as a society wife must be akin to standing in a bog. That slow, sinking sensation. I would be dragged down day by day, grow vacuous and preoccupied with frivolity like those around me. I should begin to resemble Papa or - God forbid - Mrs Pearce. At least with David I may strive to be a better person, practical and helpful to my fallen creatures.”
― Laura Purcell, The Corset

“I rather fancy, if you will forgive me an aphorism, that we live in not the Age of Reason, as so many proclaim, but in that of Ignorance; for there is nothing reason so readily proclaims to the attentive mind as the extent of our ignorance. It transforms what were once mysteries, for ever inaccessible to human comprehension, into merely phenomena we have not yet explained, and thereby at once increases what we know and what we do not.”
― Brian Ruckley, The Edinburgh Dead

“And she is aware too how very convenient it is to have found someone she wants to marry just at the moment in her life when getting married is expected of her. It is a relief not to have to marry someone for the sake of it, or to have to make a stand and marry nobody at all.”
― Nell Stevens, Briefly, A Delicious Life

“How many children could say their home hosted the humblest and highest at the same time, on any given evening invaded by expatriates their father never hesitated to invite in? Through the back door he welcomed a bookseller, organ grinder, biscuit maker, vagrant macaroni man, and one called Galli who thought he was Christ. Through the front, disgraced Italian counts and generals made as officious entrances as a small house on Charlotte Street afforded.”
― D.M. Denton, The Dove Upon Her Branch: A Novel Portrait of Christina Rossetti

“One day in the country was worth a month in town and better than Christmas, her birthday, or even Papa saying she was like the moon risen at the full.”
― D.M. Denton, The Dove Upon Her Branch: A Novel Portrait of Christina Rossetti