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19th Century Quotes

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19th Century Quotes

“Everybody we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his fellow?”

PhilosophyEssays19th CenturyEssayistPoet PhilosopherRalph Wald Emerson
Book:Essays on Manners, Self-Reliance, Compensation, Nature, Friendship
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“At all times it is a bewildering thing to the poor weaver to see his employer removing from house to house, each one grander than the last, till he ends in building one more magnificent than all, or withdraws his money from the concern, or sells his mill, to buy an estate in the country, while all the time the weaver, who thinks he and his fellows are the real makers of this wealth, is struggling on for bread for his children, through the vicissitudes of lowered wages, short hours, fewer hands employed, etc. And when he knows trade is bad, and could understand (at least partially) that there are not buyers enough in the market to purchase the goods already made, and consequently that there is no demand for more; when he would bear and endure much without complaining, could he also see that his employers were bearing their share; he is, I say, bewildered and (to use his own word) "aggravated" to see that all goes on just as usual with the millowners. Large houses are still occupied, while spinners' and weavers' cottages stand empty, because the families that once filled them are obliged to live in rooms or cellars. Carriages still roll along the streets, concerts are still crowded by subscribers, the shops for expensive luxuries still find daily customers, while the workman loiters away his unemployed time in watching these things, and thinking of the pale, uncomplaining wife at home, and the wailing children asking in vain for enough of food--of the sinking health, of the dying life of those near and dear to him. The contrast is too great. Why should he alone suffer from bad times?”

ClassPovertyHousing19th CenturyManchesterClassicsClass StruggleHousing CrisisMary Barton
Book:Mary Barton
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“Rome took all the vanity out of me, for after seeing the wonders there, I felt too insignificant to live, and gave up all my foolish hopes in despair." "Why should you, with so much energy and talent?" "That's just why, because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a common-place dauber, so I don't intend to try anymore.”

ArtRome19th CenturyAmerican LiteratureLittle WomenClassic LiteratureLouisa May AlcottQuotes About ArtAmy March19th Century Literature
Book:Little Women
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“I look in the glass sometimes at my two long, cylindrical bags (so picturesquely rugged about the knees), my stand-up collar and billycock hat, and wonder what right I have to go about making God's world hideous. Then wild and wicked thoughts come into my heart. I don't want to be good and respectable. (I never can be sensible, I'm told; so that don't matter.) I want to put on lavender-colored tights, with red velvet breeches and a green doublet slashed with yellow; to have a light-blue silk cloak on my shoulder, and a black eagle's plume waving from my hat, and a big sword, and a falcon, and a lance, and a prancing horse, so that I might go about and gladden the eyes of the people. Why should we all try to look like ants crawling over a dust-heap? Why shouldn't we dress a little gayly? I am sure if we did we should be happier. True, it is a little thing, but we are a little race, and what is the use of our pretending otherwise and spoiling fun? Let philosophers get themselves up like old crows if they like. But let me be a butterfly.”

MenBeautyFashionHumourClothesAppearance19th CenturyGaiety
Book:Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
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“...she was really very pretty, one of the prettiest girls she knew. And as if to prove it she raised her arms and unloosed her hair, a thing she knew to be vaguely sinful, yet necessary, like a hot bath or a warm bed on a winter's night. She imagined herself for a truly sinful moment as someone wicked — a dancer, an actress.”

SexSinHairDancer19th CenturyVictorianPrettyFemale SexualityActressSexual Suppression
Book:The French Lieutenant’s Woman
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“So he was queer, E.M. Forster. It wasn't his middle name (that would be 'Morgan'), but it was his orientation, his romping pleasure, his half-secret, his romantic passion. In the long-suppressed novel Maurice the title character blurts out his truth, 'I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.' It must have felt that way when Forster came of sexual age in the last years of the 19th century: seriously risky and dangerously blurt-able. The public cry had caught Wilde, exposed and arrested him, broken him in prison. He was one face of anxiety to Forster; his mother was another. As long as she lived (and they lived together until she died, when he was 66), he couldn't let her know.”

RomanceSecretsComing OutMothersHomosexuality19th CenturyGay MenOscar WildeSexual OrientationClosetedEm ForsterMaurice Novel
Author:Michael Levenson
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“Among the people to whom he belonged, nothing was written or talked about at that time except the Serbian war. Everything that the idle crowd usually does to kill time, it now did for the benefit of the Slavs: balls, concerts, dinners, speeches, ladies' dresses, beer, restaurants—all bore witness to our sympathy with the Slavs. With much that was spoken and written on the subject Konyshev did not agree in detail. He saw that the Slav question had become one of those fashionable diversions which, ever succeeding one another, serve to occupy Society; he saw that too many people took up the question from interested motives. He admitted that the papers published much that was unnecessary and exaggerated with the sole aim of drawing attention to themselves, each outcrying the other. He saw that amid this general elation in Society those who were unsuccessful or discontented leapt to the front and shouted louder than anyone else: Commanders-in-Chief without armies, Ministers without portfolios, journalists without papers, and party leaders without followers. He saw that there was much that was frivolous and ridiculous; but he also saw and admitted the unquestionable and ever-growing enthusiasm which was uniting all classes of society, and with which one could not help sympathizing. The massacre of our coreligionists and brother Slavs evoked sympathy for the sufferers and indignation against their oppressors. And the heroism of the Serbs and Montenegrins, fighting for a great cause, aroused in the whole nation a desire to help their brothers not only with words but by deeds. Also there was an accompanying fact that pleased Koznyshev. It was the manifestation of public opinion. The nation had definitely expressed its wishes. As Koznyshev put it, ' the soul of the nation had become articulate.' The more he went into this question, the clearer it seemed to him that it was a matter which would attain enormous proportions and become epoch-making.”

NovelManners19th CenturySociety NovelRealist Fiction
Book:ANNA KARENINA
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“Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where—as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen—even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their meetings. I still haven't submitted that expenses claim. The misgivings I had were of two types, both of them ineradicable. The first and the simplest was the encounter with everyday injustice: by all means the traffic cops were Jews but so, it turned out, were the colonists and ethnic cleansers and even the torturers. It was Jewish leftist friends who insisted that I go and see towns and villages under occupation, and sit down with Palestinian Arabs who were living under house arrest—if they were lucky—or who were squatting in the ruins of their demolished homes if they were less fortunate. In Ramallah I spent the day with the beguiling Raimonda Tawil, confined to her home for committing no known crime save that of expressing her opinions. (For some reason, what I most remember is a sudden exclamation from her very restrained and respectable husband, a manager of the local bank: 'I would prefer living under a Bedouin muktar to another day of Israeli rule!' He had obviously spent some time thinking about the most revolting possible Arab alternative.) In Jerusalem I visited the Tutungi family, who could produce title deeds going back generations but who were being evicted from their apartment in the old city to make way for an expansion of the Jewish quarter. Jerusalem: that place of blood since remote antiquity. Jerusalem, over which the British and French and Russians had fought a foul war in the Crimea, and in the mid-nineteenth century, on the matter of which Christian Church could command the keys to some 'holy sepulcher.' Jerusalem, where the anti-Semite Balfour had tried to bribe the Jews with the territory of another people in order to seduce them from Bolshevism and continue the diplomacy of the Great War. Jerusalem: that pest-house in whose environs all zealots hope that an even greater and final war can be provoked. It certainly made a warped appeal to my sense of history.”

WarChristianityHistoryDemocracyIsraelLondonRussiaOppressionFranceTortureBritainTerritoryWorld War IFree SpeechColonialismPersecutionPalestineDiplomacySecularismFanaticism19th CenturyAncestryJerusalemReligious ExtremismEthnic CleansingJewsArmageddonLeftismAntisemitismBolshevismCrimeaPalestiniansArabsZealotryHouse ArrestPhilip RothBedouinCrimean WarRamallahArthur BalfourRaimonda Tawil
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Well, speaking of supper, let's get it underway," she proposed. "Is there any meat in the house?" "There's plenty of chickens in the chicken house out back," Sam responded. "I'll get Aaron to help me, and we'll kill a couple of roosters." "Oh, my!" exclaimed Margaret. "Well, that will be fresh chicken, for sure!”

FamilyChickens19th CenturyChickenFried ChickenBig Family19th Century CookingFresh Chicken
Book:The House on Harmony Street
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“Vronsky meanwhile, in spite of the complete fulfilment of what he had so long desired, was not completely happy. He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes. When first he united his life with hers and donned civilian clothes, he felt the delight of freedom in general, such as he had not before known, and also the freedom of love—he was contented then, but not for long. Soon he felt rising in his soul a desire for desires—boredom. Involuntarily he began to snatch at every passing caprice, mistaking it for a desire and a purpose.”

Novel19th CenturyRussian LiteratureRealistic FictionSociety Novel
Book:ANNA KARENINA
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“Μου αρέσει η Ιταλία; Ιδού το ερώτημα. Είχα πάντα την αίσθηση ότι ήταν τρομερή χώρα. Η απερίγραπτη ομορφιά της συνοδεύεται με τις πιο ζοφερές σκέψεις. Όπου και να πας θα βρείς ίχνη από αίμα και δάκρυα. Για να είμαι ειλικρινής, αυτό ισχύει παντού στον κόσμο, εδώ όμως είναι πολύ πιο εμφανές απ ότι στις άλλες χώρες. Καθώς περνούσαν οι αιώνες, έρχονταν κι έφευγαν πόλεμοι και τυραννίες, τρομερές θεομηνίες, αμέτρητα βάσανα στα παλάτια και στα καλύβια. Διακρίνεις κάτι το ανήλεο στον γαλανό ουρανό που θεώρησε απαθής όλα αυτά. Σε ότι αφορά τον κόσμο, μπορείτε να διακρίνετε αιώνες οδύνης ζωγραφισμένους επάνω σε αυτά τα πρόσωπα και να τους ακούσετε στη φωνή των ανθρώπων. Ναι, ναι, μου αρέσει η Ιταλία. Αλλά με την ευγενέστερη σημασία της λέξης.”

TravelItaly19th CenturyItaly Journey
Book:By the Ionian Sea
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“The men and women of the Golden Age, Hesiod wrote, lived in an eternal spring, for hundreds of years, always youthful, fed on acorns from a great oak, on wild fruits, on honey. In the Silver Age, which is less written about, the people lived for 100 years as children, without growing up, and then quite suddenly aged and died. The Fabians and the social scientists, writers and teachers saw, in a way earlier generations had not, that children were people, with identities and desires and intelligences. They saw that they were neither dolls, nor toys, nor miniature adults. They saw, many of them, that children needed freedom, needed not only to learn, and be good, but to play and be wild. But they saw this, so many of them, out of a desire of their own for a perpetual childhood, a Silver Age.”

ChildhoodNostalgia19th CenturyGolden AgeInfantileFreudPrehistoryVictoriansHesiodSilver Age
Book:The Children's Book
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“Darwinism met with such overwhelming success because it provided, on the basis of inheritance, the ideological weapons for race and well as class rule and could be used for, as well as against, race discrimination. Politically speaking, Darwinism as such was neutral, and it has led, indeed, to all kinds of pacifism and cosmopolitanism as well as to the sharpest forms of imperialistic ideologies. In the seventies and eighties of the last century, Darwinism was still almost exclusively in the hands of the utilitarian anti-colonial party in England. And the first philosopher of evolution, Herbert Spencer, who treated sociology as part of biology, believed natural selection to benefit the evolution of mankind and to result in everlasting peace. For political discussion, Darwinism offered two important concepts: the struggle for existence with optimistic assertion of the necessary and automatic "survival of the fittest," and the indefinite possibilities which seemed to lie in the evolution of man out of animal life and which started the new "science" of eugenics.”

RacismImperialism19th CenturyEugenicsBourgeoisieDarwinismSurvival Of The Fittest1967Herbert SpencerClass Relations
Book:The Origins of Totalitarianism
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“Non allontanò le labbra dalla bocca di lei. «Accetto anche l'inferno – disse piano con voce rotta – sono disposto a qualsiasi sacrificio pur di averti ancora nella mia vita». Sapeva che la stava perdendo, lei era troppo corretta e onesta per vivere nell'inganno o nella menzogna, ma James non era più in grado di controllare i propri sentimenti ed era in balia di quel dolore che lo stava dilaniando. Affondò il viso nel collo di lei lasciandosi avvolgere dal suo profumo, dal calore di quel corpo disperatamente desiderato. «Ci faremmo solamente del male – disse Theresa sofferente – è troppo tardi per noi». «Sposami Theresa» disse James pianissimo in un ultimo disperato tentativo. «Non posso» sussurrò lei con voce impercettibile mentre scivolava fuori dal suo abbraccio. James percepì un freddo intenso fuori dalle sue braccia, il freddo di un addio.”

Amore19th CenturyPassioneFin De Siècle
Book:Fin de Siècle. Passione proibita
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“Nineteenth-century Russian literature, swooning with compassion for the suffering brother, had created for Nerzhin, and for everyone reading it for the first time, the image of a haloed, silvery-haired People, embodying all wisdom, moral purity, and spiritual grandeur. But that was far away, on bookshelves; it was somewhere else, in the villages and fields at the crossroads of the nineteenth century. The heavens unfolded, the twentieth century came, and those places had long since ceased to exist under Russian skies.”

19th CenturyRussian Literature1968The PeopleGleb Nerzhin
Book:The First Circle
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“Significantly, it was Disraeli who said, "What is a crime among the multitude is only a vice among the few"—perhaps the most profound insight into the very principle by which the slow and insidious decline of nineteenth-century society into the depth of mob and underworld morality took place. Since he knew this rule, he knew also that Jews would have no better chances anywhere than in circles which pretended to be exclusive and to discriminate against them; for inasmuch as these circles of the few, together with the multitude, thought of Jewishness as a crime, this "crime" could be transformed at any moment into an attractive "vice." Disraeli's display of eroticism, strangeness, mysteriousness, magic, and power drawn from secret sources, was aimed correctly at this disposition in society.”

CrimeTransformation19th CenturyUnderworldTransgressionVice1968AntisemitismExclusivityJewishnessDisraeliBenjamin Disraeli
Book:The Origins of Totalitarianism
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“The birth and growth of modern antisemitism has been accompanied by and interconnected with Jewish assimilation, the secularization and withering away of the old religious and spiritual values of Judaism. What actually happened was that great parts of the Jewish people were at the same time threatened by physical extinction from without and dissolution from within. In this situation, Jews concerned with the survival of their people would, in a curious and desperate misinterpretation, hit on the consoling idea that antisemitism, after all, might be an excellent means for keeping the people together so that the assumption of external antisemitism would even imply an external guarantee of Jewish existence. This superstition, a secularized travesty of the idea of eternity inherent in a faith in chosenness and a Messianic hope, has been strengthened through the fact that for many centuries the Jews experienced the Christian brand of hostility which was indeed a powerful agent of preservation, spiritually as well as politically. The Jews mistook modern anti-Christian antisemitism for the old religious Jew-hatred—and this all the more innocently because their assimilation had by-passed Christianity in its religious and cultural aspect. Confronted with an obvious symptom of the decline of Christianity, they could therefore imagine in all ignorance that this was some revival of the so-called "Dark Ages." Ignorance or misunderstanding of their own past were partly responsible for their fatal underestimation of the actual and unprecedented dangers which lay ahead. But one should also bear in mind that lack of political ability and judgment have been caused by the very nature of Jewish history, the history of a people without a government, without a country, and without a language. Jewish history offers the extraordinary spectacle of a people, unique in this respect, which began its history with a well-defined concept of history and an almost conscious resolution to achieve a well-circumscribed plan on earth and then, without giving up this concept, avoided all political action for two thousand years. The result was that the political history of the Jewish people became even more dependent upon unforeseen, accidental factors than the history of other nations, so that the Jews stumbled from one role to the other and accepted responsibility for none.”

Adversity19th CenturyAssimilation1968AntisemitismJewish HistoryJews And Judaism In EuropeJewish DiasporaChristianity Vs JewsJew Hated
Book:The Origins of Totalitarianism
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“To the men and women who changed Cheryl Hersha's life, she was a continuation of the research that had first been conducted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Dr. Morton Prince. He encountered a woman named Miss Beauchamp, a nursing student who was referred to the psychiatrist because of health problems. As he worked with her, Prince discovered that she had four separate personalities (dissociated ego states) that existed independently of one another within the same body. Though he tried, Dr. Prince never understood Miss Beauchamp, nor was he able to help her. When he died, his wife had the woman committed to an insane asylum for the rest of her life. However, Prince's careful documentation of Beauchamp's symptoms, actions and family history (extreme child abuse beginning before the age of seven) provided information needed to develop the techniques for contemporary, routinely successful treatment of what would be called Multiple Personality Disorder.”

AbuseMental HealthMental IllnessChild AbuseDissociative Identity Disorder19th CenturyNineteenth CenturyChild Sexual AbuseMind ControlMultiple Personality DisorderGovernment AbuseDissociativeSplit PersonalityMkultraExtreme AbuseMiss BeauchampMorton Prince
Book:Secret Weapons: How Two Sisters Were Brainwashed to Kill for Their Country
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“But a choice made is made, it cannot be changed. Things happened as they happened. It is possible to imagine all kinds of different routes across the continent, or a better way for the government to help private industry, or maybe to have the government build and own it. But those things didn’t happen, and what did take place is grand. So we admire those who did it—even if they were far from perfect—for what they were and what they accomplished and how much each of us owes them.”

ChoicesHistory19th CenturyRailroadHistorical Figures
Book:Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-69
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“Trenton got up and made for the bathroom. On the way he paused to put a record on the gramophone. He loved music first thing in the morning and his good friend Fred Astaire was a particular favourite. As he stepped into the bath, he began to sing along. ‘Da da da da da da…I’m putting’ on my top hat, tying up my white tie, brushing’ off my tails.”

HistoryMilitaryAdventureSuspense19th CenturyLocal HistoryFact BasedKhartoumDervish Enemy
Book:Death of an Officer
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“Dervishes died as the bullets smacked into them, but the rest never even thought of pausing. In a society where bravery and reputation counted for much more than mere wealth, the warrior creed drove them forward. Ancient blades flashed in the sunlight and swung again, now covered in fresh blood. In short order the ground was littered with torn and mangled Egyptian corpses and the battle was over.”

FictionHistoryMilitaryAdventureArmySuspense19th CenturyLocal HistoryFact BasedKhartoum
Book:No Road to Khartoum
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“Assim como todo excesso numa atividade costuma levar ao contrário do que se pretendia, as palavras servem de fato para tornar os pensamentos compreensíveis, mas só até certo ponto. Quando esse ponto é ultrapassado, elas tornam os pensamentos a serem comunicados mais e mais obscuros. Encontrar tal ponto é uma tarefa do estilo e uma questão da capacidade de julgar, pois toda palavra supérflua age diretamente contra seu objetivo.”

Writers On Writing19th CenturyWriters On ThinkingWriters On Style
Book:A Arte de Escrever
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“(...) assim como é preciso evitar uma sobrecarga de ornamentações na arquitetura, nas artes discursivas é preciso evitar sobretudo os floreios retóricos desnecessários, todas as amplificações inúteis e, acima de tudo, o que há de supérfluo na expressão, dedicando-se a um estilo casto. Tudo o que é dispensável tem um efeito desvantajoso. A lei da simplicidade e da ingenuidade, já que essas qualidades combinam com o que há de mais sublime, vale para todas as belas-artes.”

SimplicityWriters On Writing19th CenturyNaivetyWriters On Style
Book:A Arte de Escrever
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“...while the troubles sweeping Europe and southern Britain comprised liberal and radical elements protesting against powerful elites to secure better rights, in Badenoch it was the opposite - a subtle exercise of power by a small but influential outsider elite seeking to sweep aside the long-established rights of the lower orders, whose mere presence disrupted their leisure pursuits. There was, of course, a measure of protest, but the scattered and impoverished nature of local communities rendered them powerless. Land-owners knew well enough which side their bread was buttered on - a trend that became increasingly evident over the next two decades.”

ShootingElites19th CenturyLandownersBadenochSporting EstatesLeisure Class
Book:'The People Are Not There': The Transformation of Badenoch 1800 - 1863
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