Victorian Quotes

• We, while noting many things amiss about Victorian society, more often sense them judging us.

  A. N. Wilson

  History, Judging, British History

  "The Victorians". Book by A. N. Wilson, 1970.

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• The Victorian world is extremely dark and extremely bright.

  Harry Treadaway

  Dark, World

  Source: collider.com

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• The great crime which the moneyed classes and promoters of industry committed in the palmy Victorian days was the condemning of the workers to ugliness, ugliness, ugliness: meanness and formless and ugly surroundings, ugly ideals, ugly religion, ugly hope, ugly love, ugly clothes, ugly furniture, ugly houses, ugly relationship between workers and employers. The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Class, Clothes, House

  D. H. Lawrence (2017). “Phoenix: the Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence by D. H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.138, Delphi Classics (Parts Edition) via PublishDrive

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• The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.

  Lytton Strachey

  History, Age, Unattainable

  Eminent Victorians preface (1918)

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• Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret.

  Ralph Nader

  Sex, Dirty, Reality

  "Talking Dirty". Book by Carole McKenzie (p. 46), January 2, 2014.

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• In Victorian times the purpose of life was to develop a personality once and for all and then stand on it.

  Ashley Montagu

  Personality, Purpose, Purpose Of Life

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• Each generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England; the differences lie only in the degree of coverup - if any.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Sex, Lying, Thinking

  Introduction to "Cliff and the Calories" in "Expanded Universe" by Robert A. Heinlein, (p. 355), 1980.

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• Victorian values meant brutalizing people who were often poor.

  Charles Palliser

  People, Poor, Values

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• A perverse nature can be stimulated by anything. Any book can be used as a pornographic instrument, even a great work of literature if the mind that so uses it is off-balance. I once found a small boy masturbating in the presence of the Victorian steel-engraving in a family Bible.

  Anthony Burgess

  Sex, Book, Boys

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• I think of myself now as a writer, although I wouldn't go as far as to say 'novelist' because that sounds like a Victorian person.

  Dawn French

  Thinking, Sound, Novelists

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• I was asked whether I was trying to restore Victorian values. I said straight out I was. And I am.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Trying, Said, Iron Lady

  Margaret Thatcher, Iain Dale (1997). “As I said to Denis--: the Margaret Thatcher book of quotations”, Robson Book Ltd

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• The growth of art seems to be in cycles, and often its vigorous lifetime is restricted to a century or two. The periods of distinctive drama, Greek, English, Spanish, fall within such a limit; the schools of painting and sculpture likewise; and, in poetry, the Victorian age or the school of Pope will serve as examples.

  George Edward Woodberry

  Art, Drama, Fall

  George Edward Woodberry (1914). “Two Phases of Criticism, Historical and Aesthetic: Lectures Delivered on the Larwill Foundation of Kenyon College, May Seventh and Eighth, 1913”

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• I wouldnt mind being a fly on the wall in a few Victorian parlours.

  Sarah Waters

  Wall, Mind

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• When women let their hair down, it means either sexiness or craziness or death, the three by Victorian times having become virtually synonymous.

  Margaret Atwood

  Women, Mean, Hair

  "Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For". Speech at the Stratford Festival, September 1997.

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• Redheads get so stereotyped. You're either exotic and wild or totally Victorian.

  Alicia Witt

  Exotic

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary.

  Ken Follett

  Writing, Cutting, Long

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• I think I would like to be in Victorian times. Small town. Bandstands. Summer. That kind of thing. Without disease.

  Rod Serling

  Summer, Thinking, Disease

  Source: www.rodserling.com

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• I was a bit of a Victorian Lady, fainting-wise.

  John Green

  Wise, Fainting, Bits

  John Green (2013). “The John Green Collection”, p.662, Penguin

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• The reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.

  Connie Willis

  Moving, Impossible, Reason

  Connie Willis (2009). “To Say Nothing of the Dog”, p.174, Bantam

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• It is a sort of great Victorian truth that actually, trying to do the right thing is pretty good for you and pretty good for business as well, by and large.

  Chris Patten

  Trying, Wells, Right Thing

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• ...But I don't think I'm the only person who is tired of books and movies full of paper-doll characters you don't care about, who have no self-respect and no respect for anybody or any institution....And I don't want to sound preachy or Victorian, but I'm tired of amorality in fiction and in real life. Immorality is a fascinating human dilemma that creates suspense for the readers and tension for the characters, but where is the tension in an amoral situation? When people have no personal code, nothing is threatening and nothing is meaningful.

  Olive Ann Burns

  Meaningful, Real, Book

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• It is no accident that the Victorian age, the heyday of conventionalism, was the cultural bloom of economic liberalism.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Age, Heyday, Economic

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• In large Victorian houses with many rooms and heavy doors, the occupants could be mysterious and exciting to one another in a way that those who live in rackety developments can never hope to be. Not even the lust of a Lord Byron could survive the fact of Levittown.

  Gore Vidal

  Doors, House, Lust

  Gore Vidal (1969). “Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship. (1. Ed.)”, Boston : Little, Brown

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• Conscience was the barmaid of the Victorian soul. Recognizing that human beings were fallible and that their failings, though regrettable, must be humored, conscience would permit, rather ungraciously perhaps, the indulgence of a number of carefully selected desires.

  C. E. M. Joad

  Numbers, Soul, Desire

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• There have been 14 versions that I can find of Burke & Hare movies. They have all been horror films and all the movies have taken place in Victorian times, which doesn't make any sense.

  John Landis

  Taken, Film, Horror

  Interview with Jason Guerrasio, film.avclub.com. September 08, 2011.

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