129 Quotes About Victorian

—it seemed as if she could dream her life away in such luxury of pensiveness, in which she made her present all in all, from not daring to think of the past, or wishing to contemplate the future. (Pg 59)

Although it had been several years since, I could still taste the atmosphere of that horrible day. The stench, the braying of the horse in the yard outside, the shuffling and scraping of chairs in the room above, and then the muted mumbling of serious voices. Serious voices that had come upon a seriously wrong conclusion...

The repetitive drone of the shanty music and raucous banter had stopped dead. All eyes were upon them. ‘Carry on, boys—don’t let me spoil yer merriment,’ Brady called, rolling his hand around in a barrel-organ gesture. Then, just like an engine, the whole commotion rumbled up to steam again, the fiddler’s elbow sawing away, concertina pumping and spoons clacking, but no one sang...

However, when we got to the pathway outside the churchyard, where there was a puddle of water, remaining from the storm, I daubed my feet with mud, using each foot in turn on the other, so that as we went home, no one, in case we should meet any one, should notice my bare feet.

[...] we got up and walked down Piccadilly. Jonathan was holding me by the arm, the way he used to in the old days before I went to school. I felt it very improper, for you can't go on for some years teaching etiquette and decorum to other girls without the pedantry of it biting into yourself a bit; but it was Jonathan, and he was my husband, and we didn't know anybody who saw us - and we didn't care if they did - so on we walked.

To adorn her in somebody else’s eyes; never again in mine.

Our little systems have their day They have their day and cease to be They are but broken lights of TheeAnd Thou, O L-rd, art more than theyWe have but faith, we cannot knowFor knowledge is of things we seeAnd yet we trust it comes from TheeA beam in darkness: let it growLet knowledge grow from more to moreBut more of reverence in us dwellThat mind and soul, according wellMay make one music as before

All our lives, we long, we long, thinking it is the moon we long for. So how, when we meet it in the shape of a most fair woman, can we do less than leave all others for her?

The man’s hands had a terrible unsettling power over her. He didn’t brush or lightly graze her skin. He stroked her, caressed her, as if he wished to give her pleasure rather than take his own.