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Victorian Era Quotes

Browse 75 quotes about Victorian Era.

Victorian Era Quotes

“No one was planning to travel light. One brigadier claimed that he needed fifty camels to carry his kit, while General Cotton took 260 for his. Three hundred camels were earmarked to carry the military wine cellar. Even junior officers travelled with as many as forty servants—ranging from cooks and sweepers to bearers and water carriers. According to Major General Nott, who had to work his way up through his career without the benefit of connections, patronage or money and who looked with a jaundiced eye on the rich young officers of the Queen's Regiments, it was already clear that the army was not enforcing proper military austerity. Many of the junior officers were already treating the war as though it were as light-hearted as a hunting trip—indeed one regiment had actually brought its own foxhounds with it to the front.”

WarTravelIndiaArmyAfghanistanBaggageVictorian EraEast India Company
Book:Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan
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“By the time the Victorian era began in 1837, women enjoying almost anything at all was associated with sinfulness. They were seen as the weaker sex who were more prey to temptation, so it was better for everyone involved if they just stayed at home. Maybe even closed inside a stockings drawer or hatbox. Just in case.”

Victorian EraWomen S Roles
Book:Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol
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“The Hotel dining-room, like most of the others I was to find in the Highlands, had its walls covered with pictures of all sorts of wild game, living or in the various postures of death that are produced by sport. Between these pictures the walls were alert with the stuffed heads of deer, furnished with antlers of every degree of magnificence. A friend of mine has a theory that these pictures of dying birds and wounded beasts are intended to whet the diner's appetite, and perhaps they did in the more lusty age of Victoria; but I found they had the opposite effect on me, and had to keep my eyes from straying too often to them. In one particular hotel this idea was carried out with such thoroughness that the walls of its dining room looked like a shambles, they presented such an overwhelming array of bleeding birds, beasts and fishes. To find these abominations on the walls of Highland hotels, among a people of such delicacy in other things, is peculiarly revolting, and rubs in with superfluous force that this is a land whose main contemporary industry is the shooting down of wild creatures; not production of any kind but wholesale destruction. This state of things is not the fault of the Highlanders, but of the people who have bought their country and come to it chiefly to kill various forms of life.”

ShootingScotlandVictorian EraHighlandsSporting EstatesHighland HotelsWild Game
Book:Scottish Journey
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“The [sexual harassment] situation has gotten so out of hand that, in 1993, in one of the first British cases, a plumber was fired for continuing to use the traditional term "ballcock" for the toilet flotation unit, instead of the new politically correct term, sanitized of sexual suggestiveness. This is insane. We are back to the Victorian era, when table legs had to be draped lest they put the thought of ladies' legs into someone's dirty mind.”

MindFirstsUseHandsTermSituationCasesTablesLegsBritishTraditionalInsaneErasDirtyContinuingUnitsToiletsHarassmentPolitically CorrectVictorianPlumberVictorian EraDirty Minds
Author:Camille Paglia
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“In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over the last 700 years - starting with Beowulf and Chaucer and working his way up through the Renaissance, the Victorian era and on into the 20th century.”

WayWritingYearsLastsUsedCenturyStyleParticularMajorsStartingErasChapters20th CenturyRamaRenaissanceVictorianJoyceAmerican WriterUlyssesWriting StyleVictorian EraChaucer
Author:Frederick Lenz
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“I'm completely uninterested in the origins of Stonehenge. I don't care about the real story behind it or whether it should be saved or not. What I'm interested in is this: in the Victorian era, you could go there as an early cultural tourist and you were given a chisel to chip off a bit of the stones and take it with you. That's what you did in Victorian times.”

ShouldRealStoriesCareGivenBitsBehindsStonesDon't CareSavedErasI Don't CareChipsTouristsVictorianVictorian EraChiselsReal StoryUninterestedStonehengeVictorian Times
Author:Aleksandra Mir
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“I was every Londoner's stereotypical idea of a brash, vulgar American. When I got here, it turned out that London was the Wild West, and New York was like London at the height of the Victorian era, in which everyone was far more obsessed with table manners and status-climbing than they are in London. In London, everyone was just crawling over this blizzard of cocaine. Here, if you have more than a glass of wine with your meal, people refer you to Alcoholics Anonymous.”

PeopleIfsIdeasNew YorkTablesWineWestGlassesLondonMannersErasHeightObsessedMealsClimbingVulgarAlcoholicsCocaineVictorianCrawlingAlcoholics AnonymousWine GlassBlizzardVictorian EraWild WestBrashLondonersTable Manners
Author:Toby Young
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“You've probably heard about the theory of steam-engine time - that even after the steam engine had been invented, it had to wait until people were ready to make use of it. The same thing happens in literary circles. The truth is, I'm not terribly interested in Victorian times; I'm interested in Victorian writers. I'm interested in most eras of history, but not the Victorian Era especially. I was interested in the John Franklin Expedition. I was interested in these last five weird years of Dickens' life. And I just have to take the age that comes with all that when I write about it.”

PeopleWritingAgeWaitingTruth IsThings HappenFranklinVictorian Era
Author:Dan Simmons
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