65 Quotes by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Berthe was wonderfully well educated for a Frenchwoman of that period, and surprisingly handsome for a Frenchwoman of any.

The mind is a different organ by night and by day.

I am afraid we women are factionists; we always take a side, and nature has formed us for advocates rather than judges.

The air was still. The silvery vapour hung serenely on the far horizon, and the frosty stars blinked brightly. Everyone knows the effect of such a scene on a mind already saddened. Fancies and regrets float mistily in the dream, and the scene affects us with a strange mixture of memory and anticipation, like some sweet old air heard in the distance.

Places change imperceptibly – in detail, at least – a good deal,′ said the Doctor, making an effort to keep up a conversation that plainly would not go on itself; ‘and people too; population shifts – there’s an old fellow, sir, they call Death.

Those hours of opium happiness which the Doctor and I spent together in secret were regulated with a scientific accuracy. We did not blindly smoke the drug of paradise, and leave our dreams to chance. While smoking, we carefully steered our conversation through the brightest and calmest channels of thought.

We are in God’s hands: nothing can happen without his permission, and all will end well for those who love him. He is our faithful creator; He has made us all, and will take care of us.” “Creator! Nature!“ said the young lady in answer to my gentle father. “And this disease that invades the country is natural. Nature. All things proceed from Nature – don’t they? All things in the heaven, in the earth, and under the earth, act and live as Nature ordains? I think so.

How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long – the care of cares – the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven – and straight you find a new stratum there. As physical science tells us no fluid is without its skin, so does it seem with this fine medium of the soul, and these successive films of care that form upon its surface on mere contact with the upper air and light.

D’Avray, her father, and I had met before in Algeria. He was dying now. He left the child on his death-bed to me.