Victorian Writers

"Mrs. Troyle paused again, with the self-applauding air of one who has detected an asp lurking in an apple-charlotte."

"His socks compelled one's attention without losing one's respect."

"I came here to get freedom from the inane interruptions of the mentally deficient, but it seems I asked too much of fate."

"Romance at short notice was her speciality."

"A beautifully constructed borsch, such as you are going to experience presently, ought not only to banish conversation but almost to annihilate thought."

"Sophie Chattel-Monkheim was a Socialist by conviction and a Chattel-Monkheim by marriage."

"Waldo is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death."

"Cyprian was a boy who carried with him through early life the wondering look of a dreamer, the eyes of one who sees things that are not visible to ordinary mortals, and invests the commonplace things of this world with qualities unsuspected by plainer folk – the eyes of a poet or a house agent."

"The sacrifices of friendship were beautiful in her eyes as long as she was not asked to make them."

"To be among people who are smothered in furs when one hasn't any oneself makes one want to break most of the Commandments."

"If only Saki – the pen name of Hector Hugh Munro – were still alive. The age of Trump needs his brutal dismantling of human stupidities. Despite a coterie of literary fans, Saki’s icy, perfectly constructed short stories have been relatively little read over the past 50 years – years of smug belief in endless progress — but his tales, by turns malevolent and macabre, may be due a revival in our new age of exigency. … He was a glorious pyromaniac let loose in the genteel upper-middle-class Edwardian world he knew so well. In many of his stories, stuffy authority figures are set against forces of nature – polecats, hyenas, tigers. Even if they are not eaten, the humans rarely have the best of it."

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation."

"The animal which the Egyptians worshipped as divine, which the Romans venerated as a symbol of liberty, which Europeans in the ignorant Middle Ages anathematised as an agent of demonology, has displayed to all ages two closely blended characteristics — courage and self-respect. No matter how unfavourable the circumstances, both qualities are always to the fore. Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission to the impending visitation, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance. And disassociate the luxury-loving cat from the atmosphere of social comfort in which it usually contrives to move, and observe it critically under the adverse conditions of civilisation — that civilisation which can impel a man to the degradation of clothing himself in tawdry ribald garments and capering mountebank dances in the streets for the earning of the few coins that keep him on the respectable, or non-criminal, side of society. The cat of the slums and alleys, starved, outcast, harried, still keeps amid the prowlings of its adversity the bold, free, panther-tread with which it paced of yore the temple courts of Thebes, still displays the self-reliant watchfulness which man has never taught it to lay aside."

"We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart."

"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."

"Put that bloody cigarette out!"

"Reginald in his wildest lapses into veracity never admits to being more than twenty-two."

"I found everyone talking nervously and feverishly of the weather and the war in South Africa, except Reginald, who was reclining in a comfortable chair with the dreamy, far-away look that a volcano might wear just after it had desolated entire villages."

"It is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the average female relative in the country."

"I am not collecting copies of the cheaper editions of Omar Khayyám. I gave the last four that I received to the lift-boy, and I like to think of him reading them, with FitzGerald's notes, to his aged mother. Lift-boys always have aged mothers; shows such nice feeling on their part, I think."

"To die before being painted by Sargent is to go to Heaven prematurely."

"You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return."

"To have reached thirty," said Reginald, "is to have failed in life."

"The fashion just now is a Roman Catholic frame of mind with an Agnostic conscience: you get the mediaeval picturesqueness of the one with the modern conveniences of the other."

"Which reminds me of the man I read of in some sacred book who was given a choice of what he most desired. And because he didn't ask for titles and honours and dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other things came to him also." "I am sure you didn't read about him in any sacred book." "Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett."

"Mother, may I go and maffick, Tear around and hinder traffic?"

"And the sleeper, eye unlidding, Heard a voice for ever bidding Much farewell to Dolly Gray; Turning weary on his truckle- Bed he heard the honey-suckle Lauded in apiarian lay."

"Reginald, in his way, was a pioneer. None of the rest of his family had anything approaching Titian hair or a sense of humour, and they used primroses as a table decoration. It follows that they never understood Reginald, who came down late to breakfast, and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful things about the universe. The family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even the weather forecast."

"And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to unregenerate youth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, which always seems so much more scandalous in the country, where people rise early to see if a new strawberry has happened during the night."

"I always say beauty is only sin deep."

"I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly."

"Work is the outcome of effort; fruit, of life."

"You are not sent to preach death and sin and judgment, but life and holiness and salvation – not to be a witness against the people, but to be a witness for God – to preach the good news – Christ Himself."

"You do not need a great faith, but faith in a great God."

"The vine . . . is not the root merely, but all - root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit: and Jesus is not only that: He is soil and sunshine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than we ever dreamed, wished for, or needed."

"Fruit-bearing involves cross-bearing. We know how the Lord Jesus became fruitful – not by bearing His Cross merely, but by dying on it. Do we know much of fellowship with Him in this?"

"I so want you to realise this principle of working with God and asking Him for everything. If the work is at the command of God, then we can go to Him in full confidence for workers; and when God gives the workers, we can go to Him for means to supply their needs."

"Argument almost always leaves behind a sore feeling in the heart of the one who has been worsted. By loving teaching, by Christ-like living, we are to win this people for our Lord. They do not understand what disinterested love and unselfishness mean: you are to go and live it amont them."

"On September 13, 1888, Jonathan Goforth, famed Canadian pioneer Presbyterian missionary to China, made his first exploration tour of North Honan. Honan was considered one of the most anti-foreign and dangerous parts of China. Yet God had called Goforth to it. Hudson Taylor wrote him, “We have been trying, unsuccessfully, for ten years, to get into Honan. We’ve been beaten, stoned, and turned back time and again. Brother, if you would enter that province, you must go forward on your knees!"

"All God's giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them"

"A little thing is a little thing, but faithfulness in little things is a great thing."

"After proving God’s faithfulness for many years, I can testify that times of want have ever been times of spiritual blessing, or have led to them."

"Brighton, 25 June 1965: “All at once came the thought – If you are simply obeying the LORD, all the responsibility will rest on Him, not on you! What a relief!! Well, I cried to God – You shall be responsible for them, and for me too!”"

"An easy-going non-self-denying life will never be one of power."

"And he who in all things recognises himself as the servant of GOD may count on a sufficiency from GOD for all manner of need, and look with confident expectation to GOD to really prosper him in whatever he does."

"At home you can never know what it is to be alone – absolutely alone, amidst thousands, as you can in a Chinese city, without one friend, one companion, everyone looking on you with curiosity, with contempt, with suspicion or with dislike. Thus to learn what it is to be despised and rejected of men – of those you wish to benefit, your motives not understood . . . and then to have the love of Jesus applied to your heart by the Holy Spirit . . . this is worth coming for."

"But God makes no mistakes; according to their service He divides the help, and those who are called to the holiest service are those who can have least assistance."

"China is not to be won for Christ by quiet ease-loving men and women."

"Christ is either Lord of all, or is not Lord at all."

"Consider six or eight hours a day sacred to the Lord and His work, and let nothing hinder your giving this time (to language study and practice) till you can preach fluently and intelligibly."