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Victorian Era Quotes

Browse 75 quotes about Victorian Era.

Victorian Era Quotes

“The two of us locked up our own little secrets from the real world. We had experienced countless sleepless nights when we would share our fears, our worries, and our passions; when we would gossip about the school and the other girls. We had played too many pranks and snuck out more than enough times to be expelled if the teachers ever found out. We were professionals at the art of being discreet; however, we had never found sneaking out of a residence necessary, especially when the reason was not to play a prank.”

FriendshipFantasyFriendsYoung AdultComing Of AgeYoung Adult FictionHistorical FictionYoung Adult FantasyVictorianVictorian Era
Book:Thorns in the Shadow
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“There was a sudden flash of lightning which brightly illuminated our faces. I squinted against the harsh light. It was soon followed by the crack of thunder. The strong wind whipped our hair around our faces, and the younger girls squealed as they quickly ran across the grass to get inside the school. Rose and I sat up, smiles on our faces as we listened to the weather’s dangerous melody. The third flash of lightning finally ripped open the sky’s belly. Freezing rain cascaded out, drenching us in a matter of seconds, the flower garlands drooping and lying limp on our matted hair.”

FriendshipFantasyFriendsRainYoung AdultStormComing Of AgeYoung Adult FictionHistorical FictionYoung Adult FantasyVictorianVictorian Era
Book:Thorns in the Shadow
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“Let me kiss you here,” he coaxed. “Just once.” “Oh, God… no.” She reached down and weakly pushed his hand away. “It’s a sin.” “How do you know?” “Because it feels like one,” she managed to say. He laughed quietly and pulled her hips farther toward him with a decisiveness that drew a little yelp from her. “In that case… I never sin by half measures.”

SeductionHistorical RomanceVictorian EraKleypas
Book:Cold-Hearted Rake
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“It is nine o'clock, and London has breakfasted. Some unconsidered tens of thousands have, it is true, already enjoyed with what appetite they might their pre-prandial meal; the upper fifty thousand, again, have not yet left their luxurious couches, and will not breakfast till ten, eleven o'clock, noon; nay, there shall be sundry listless, languid members of fast military clubs, dwellers among the tents of Jermyn Street, and the high-priced second floors of Little Ryder Street, St. James's, upon whom one, two, and three o'clock in the afternoon shall be but as dawn, and whose broiled bones and devilled kidneys shall scarcely be laid on the damask breakfast-cloth before Sol is red in the western horizon. I wish that, in this age so enamoured of statistical information, when we must needs know how many loads of manure go to every acre of turnip-field, and how many jail-birds are thrust into the black hole per mensem for fracturing their pannikins, or tearing their convict jackets, that some M'Culloch or Caird would tabulate for me the amount of provisions, solid and liquid, consumed at the breakfasts of London every morning. I want to know how many thousand eggs are daily chipped, how many of those embryo chickens are poached, and how many fried; how many tons of quartern loaves are cut up to make bread-and-butter, thick and thin; how many porkers have been sacrificed to provide the bacon rashers, fat and streaky ; what rivers have been drained, what fuel consumed, what mounds of salt employed, what volumes of smoke emitted, to catch and cure the finny haddocks and the Yarmouth bloaters, that grace our morning repast. Say, too, Crosse and Blackwell, what multitudinous demands are matutinally made on thee for pots of anchovy paste and preserved tongue, covered with that circular layer - abominable disc! - of oleaginous nastiness, apparently composed of rancid pomatum, but technically known as clarified butter, and yet not so nasty as that adipose horror that surrounds the truffle bedecked pate  de  foie gras. Say, Elizabeth Lazenby, how many hundred bottles of thy sauce (none of which are genuine unless signed by thee) are in request to give a relish to cold meat, game, and fish. Mysteries upon mysteries are there connected with nine o'clock breakfasts.”

CultureFoodEnglandLondonJournalismBreakfastEnglishVictorianUnited KingdomVictorian EraUkVictorian Age
Book:Twice Round the Clock, or the Hours of the Day and Night in London
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“Not The Done Thing by Stewart Stafford Pass the strawberry conserve here, Layer some cream on top, This is how one eats scones, my dear, We’re not pigs feeding in a trough. Pinky raised when you sip tea, No slurping sounds escaping your mouth, Cucumber sandwiches in tiny triangles, Crusts of bread all cut out. Drawing room dramas over cordials ensue, Gossip exchanged with finest manners, Secrets kept as the cabal breaks up, The public face flew on their banners. © 2021, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

ClassEtiquetteSocial NormsWordplayVictorian EraTea TimeBritish CultureSocial SatireComedy Of MannersDrawing Room Drama
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“The courses their lives took mirrored that of so many other women of the Victorian age, and yet were so singular in the way they ended. It is for them that I write this book. I do so in the hope that we may now hear their stories clearly and give back to them that which was so brutally taken away with their lives: their dignity.”

DignityVictorian EraJack The RipperVictorian Age
Book:The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women
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“Self-preservation and determination meant she could get away with anything. As her law-abiding, conventionally minded daughter, I secretly envied her this. She was not the clinging-vine type, nor one who could coax sugar from a lemon. Hers was the frontal attack with no inhibitions. She told the Nazis you could not trust Hitler, and they let her go. In the days of chaperones, she hitch-hiked a ride on a French destroyer along the coast of Crete; 'All quite proper, I had my cook with me,' she explained.”

FranceSelf DeterminationSelf PreservationNazisVictorian EraWomen S HistoryArchaeologistsCreteHarriet Boyd Hawes
Author:Mary Allsebrook
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“We've been brought up to think of the Victorians as prudes, horrified by a glimpse of table leg, but that myth was constructed in the 1920s out of whole cloth, to give their rebellious children an excuse to point and say, "We invented sex!" The reality is stranger: the Victorians were licentious in the extreme behind closed doors, only denying everything in public in the pursuit of probity.”

SocietyVictorian EraEnglish HistoryVictorians
Book:The Fuller Memorandum
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“بنابراین در ظاهر، به نظر می رسد مردم عصر ویکتوریا نه تنها کودکی را ابداع نکردند بلکه آن را از بین بردند. اما در واقع مسئله پیچیده تر از این بود. والدین عصر ویکتوریا با دریغ محبت از کودکان در دوره ی کودکی و بعد با تلاش برای کنترل رفتار آنان حتی تا بزرگسالی،در این موقعیت بسیار عجیب قرار داشتند که در همان شرایطی که می کوشیدند جلوی کودکی را بگیرند تلاش داشتند کاری کنند تا همیشه دوام داشته باشد. شاید تعجب آور نباشد که پایان عصر ویکتوریا تقریبا دقیقا با ابداع روانکاوی همزمان شد.”

HistoryParents And ChildrenVictorian EraChildcareتاریخPhsychologyروانشناسیوالدین و کودکانفرزندپروریعصر ویکتوریایی
Book:At Home: A Short History of Private Life
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“Victoria may have been brought up by Lehzen to admire Elizabeth I, but she wasn't capable of emulating her. She didn't have the brains, the background or the dedication to remain on the throne alone. She also had the misfortune to live in an age that was beginning to expect less of women. The family had previously been an economic unit, with all its members working and contributing. But the Industrial Revolution had begun to provide working men with large enough wages to keep their wives at home.”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryEnglish MonarchyPatriachy
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“I hope whomever Miss Trent is sending arrives soon.” Mr Maxwell shivered and wrapped his arms about himself. “Who does she usually send to these initial client meetings?” “I really couldn’t say,” [Miss Dexter] replied, honestly. “Miss Trent sends whomever she feels would be most appropriate.”

LondonCrime FictionWomen S StrengthVictorian EraMystery FictionDetective Fiction
Book:The Case of the Curious Client
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“The world of shadows and superstition that was Victorian England, so well depicted in this 1871 tale, was unique. While the foundations of so much of our present knowledge of subjects like medicine, public health, electricity, chemistry and agriculture, were being, if not laid, at least mapped out, people could still believe in the existence of devils and demons. And why not? A good ghost story is pure entertainment. It was not until well into the twentieth century that ghost stories began to have a deeper significance and to become allegorical; in fact, to lose their charm. No mental effort is required to read 'The Weird Woman', no seeking for hidden meanings; there are no complexities of plot, no allegory on the state of the world. And so it should be. At what other point in literary history could a man, standing over the body of his fiancee, say such a line as this: 'Speak, hound! Or, by heaven, this night shall witness two murders instead of one!' Those were the days. (introduction to "The Weird Woman")”

HorrorVictorianGhost StoriesVictorian EraGhost StoryVictorian AgeVictorian LondonVictorian Literature
Book:Terror by Gaslight: More Victorian Tales of Terror
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“One of the very few valid criticisms of Queen Victoria is that she was not sufficiently concerned with improvement of the conditions in which a great mass of her subjects passed their lives. She lived through an age of profound social change, but neither public health, nor housing, nor the education of her people, nor their representation, engaged much of her time.”

Victorian EraQueen VictoriaVictorian Age
Book:Queen Victoria, From her Birth to the Death of the Prince Consort
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“I had discovered the recipe in a book in the basement just last week, had devoured its advice and warnings about beauty, and instructions for potpourri, herbal masks, and beauty soaks. The stern Victorian words, capitalized and underscored: The Young Lady is advised to retire to the Privacy of her own toiletry with only the company of her Maid to assist in the Beauty Episode. When I had leafed through the yellowed, musty pages, a pressed pansy, as brittle and brown as a moth's wing, had zigzagged to the floor in a papery flurry.”

VintageVictorian EraBeauty Tips
Book:The Garden Angel
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“It was a passage fitting for a Victorian heroine, submitting herself to the greater goodness of her man. She made herself comfortable with the unwomanliness of her actions by convincing herself that it was Albert who was making a sacrifice. Subsuming herself to him was how she justified, in her mind, the two opposing roles of queen and wife.”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryEnglish Monarchy
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Victoria would in fact be the only married woman in the whole country who'd retain control over her own income and property. This was important. The reason Albert had nearly given up on the courtship was because it placed him "in a very ridiculous position. "Even now, everyone would know that he wasn't really the master in his own household. ... And then again, there was the distressing fact that she'd been the one to speak first. "Since the Queen did herself for a husband 'propose'," ran a London ballad, "the ladies will all do the same, I suppose: Their days of subserviency now will be past, For all will "speak first" as they always did last!”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryEnglish Monarchy
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“The papers were pleased. "She is kept by the nation as a spectacle," claimed the Penny Satirist, establishing a current of thought that would flow through Victoria's whole reign, "and it is right that she should be seen. In fact, it is her duty to come out and show herself, that we may have value for our money.”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryAnti FeminismEnglish Monarchy
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“The gradual change, from her [Victoria] dominance to his [Albert], was taking place not just in ballrooms but more widely in British society. The genders became more clearly and hierarchically distinguished as the 1830s gave way to the 1840s. A successful marriage, thought Sarah Ellis, writing in 1843, was founded on one important truth. "It is," she counselled her female readers, "the superiority of your husband as a man." "You may have more talent, with higher attainments," she advised them, "but this has nothing whatever to do with your position as a woman, which is, and must be, inferior to his as a man.”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryAnti FeminismEnglish Monarchy
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Victoria started to chafe against the immobility and inconvenience of being pregnant again so quickly: "men never think, or at least seldom think, what a hard task it is for us women to go through this very often." But Albert insisted. Not only was it a royal duty, he could perhaps see that having the babies occupied his wife, weighed her down and allowed him to assume more and more of her responsibilities.”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryAnti FeminismEnglish MonarchyQueen Victorias Diaries
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Victoria came to understand that her depression was a distinct malady that came and went, but which affected her particularly during and after pregnancy. ... Yet Albert made sure the babies kept coming. "It is too hard and dreadful what we have to go through," Victoria complained. Men ought to "do every thing to make up, for what after all they alone are the cause of.”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryAnti FeminismEnglish MonarchyQueen Victorias Diaries
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“In talking so proudly about her "happy domestic home", Victoria was prefiguring the words of John Ruskin, the commentator who'd make the best-known pronouncement on the proper role of a Victorian woman. Home, he thought, was a "woman's true place and power". While a husband had to go to brave the rough world's perils, a wife should remain behind, in a private realm where her "great function is Praise" and her great opportunity the "sweet ordering" of her household.”

HistoryFeminismVictorian EraQueen VictoriaHerstoryAnti FeminismEnglish Monarchy
Book:Queen Victoria: Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow
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“Let no lady commence and continue a correspondence with a view to marriage, for fear that she may never have another opportunity. It is the mark of judgment and rare good sense to go through life without wedlock, if she cannot marry from love. Somewhere in eternity, the poet tells us, our true mate will be found. Do not be afraid of being an "old maid". The disgrace attached to that term long since passed away. Unmarried ladies of mature years are proverbially among the most intelligent, accomplished, and independent to be found in society.”

WomenMarriageWomanEtiquetteVictorian EraVictorians
Book:The Essential Handbook of Victorian Etiquette
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