Historical Novels

"That is love Which chooseth from a thousand only one To be the object of that tenderness Natural to every heart; which can resign Its own best happiness for one dear sake; Can bear with absence ; hath no part in hope, For hope is somewhat selfish : love is not, And doth prefer another to itself."

"Much may be said in favour of a long walk on a summer twilight ; the heart opens to the soft influences of the lovely hour; but those very influences distract us from ourselves. The eye is caught by the presence of the beautiful : the violets, half hidden in the long grass ; a branch of hawthorn, heavy with its fragrant load ; a cloud, on which the crimson shadow lingers to the last: — these are too fair to be passed by unnoticed ; they take us from our discourse with a half unconscious delight. Moreover, before the calm and subduing aspect of nature, human cares feel their own vanity. The lulling music of leaves, stirred only by the gentle wind, enters into the soul ; and the sweet, deep drawn, breath brings its own tranquillity."

"Confidence is inseparable from human nature. Never was temper so reserved but it has its moments of unbending — moments when the full heart unlocks its secret fountains, and tells of emotions unsuspected, and thoughts hitherto concealed by the guarded brow and practised lip. Now, of all times and places calculated for confidence, there is no time like evening ; no place like sitting over the fire."

"A friend is never alarmed for us in the right place."

"Only by looking up, can we see heaven."

"Nothing can be permitted to the few ; rights and advantages were sent for all …"

"The tears started, but pride repressed them ; or, rather, pride is no name for the sensitive and shrinking feeling which trembles even at compassion for its misery."

"I believe The grave exalts, not separates, the ties That hold us in affection to our kind. I will look down from yonder pitying sky, Watching and waiting those I loved on earth Anxious in heaven, until they too are there."

"Power is a debt to the people :"

"The political creed, of which expediency is the alpha and the omega, can never know the generous purpose, or the high result."

"Ignorance, far more than idleness, is the mother of all the vices ; and how recent has been the ad mission, that knowledge should be the portion of all ? The destinies of the future lie in judicious education; an education that must be universal, to be beneficial."

"[From Lady Marchmont]: A swan always gives the idea of a court-lady, — stately in her grace, ruffling in her bravery, and conscious of the floating plumes that mark her pretensions. The peacock is a coquette ; it turns in the sunshine, it looks round as if to ask the conscious air of its purple and gold ; but the swan sails on in majestic tranquillity, it sees the fair image of its perfect grace on the waters below, and is content …"

"This is the charm of poetry : it comes On sad perturbed moments ; and its thoughts, Like pearls amid the troubled waters, gleam. That which we garnered in our eager youth, Becomes a long delight in after years: The mind is strengthened, and the heart refreshed By some old memory of gifted words, That bring sweet feelings, answering to our own, Or dreams that waken some more lofty mood Than dwelleth with the commonplace of life."

"Disbelief in excellence is the worst soil in which the mind can work ; we must believe, before we can hope."

"Give the children of the poor that portion of education which will enable them to know their own resources ; which will cultivate in them an onward-looking hope, and give them rational amusement in their leisure hours : this, and this only, will work out that moral revolution, which is the legislator's noblest purpose. One great evil of highly civilised society is, the immense distance between the rich and the poor ; it leads, on either side, to a hardened selfishness. Where we know little, we care little ; but the fact once admitted, that there can be neither politically nor morally a good which is not universal, that we cannot reform for a time, or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy."

"It is strange the difference between the hair of the living and the dead : the one so soft, so fragrant, and falling ; the other so harsh, so scentless, and so straight. In nothing is the presence of mortality more strongly marked."

"Our whole nature must change ; we must be less susceptible, less dependent on "blind accident," before we can shake off hopes and fears, which are almost superstitions."

"England may be deficient in public gardens, but where are there so many private ones, each the delight of their master, and the household that have planted their shrubs, and watered their flowers? What little worlds of affection and comfort are bounded by the neat quickset-hedge, quiet and still as the nest of some singing-bird !"

"For a wonder, two ladies were actually punctual to an appointment : …"

"[From Lady Marchmont]: Vanity is the real lever with which Archimedes said he could move the earth ;"

"[From Lady Marchmont]: Universal conquest should be the motto of our sex. Every woman should try to make every man she sees in love with her."

"The presence of perpetual change Is ever on the earth; To-day is only as the soil That gives to-morrow birth."

"A woman's first look is at the dress of her friend, and her second word is of jt."

"Still, it must be confessed, that when the sad-coloured satin was arranged in rich folds, and the Mechlin lace (it was a little fortune in itself) hung to her satisfaction, she looked as perfect a specimen of an old lady as England could have produced."

"When a woman has once made up her mind to be imprudent, she is very imprudent indeed ; …"

"[From Lady Marchmont]: I am always the most seemingly lively when I am the least so in reality ; and I talk nonsense when I have not courage to talk sense. I make a noise, like children, because I am frightened at finding myself in the dark — that worst of darkness, the darkness of the heart."

"The serious things of life are its keenest mockeries. The things set apart for laughter are not half so absurd as those marked out for tears."

"Ah, tell me not that memory Sheds gladness o'er the past, What is recalled by faded flowers, Save that they did not last? Were it not better to forget, Than but remember and regret ?"

"Why, life must mock itself to mark how small Are the distinctions of its various pride. ‘Tis strange how we delight in the unreal; The fanciful and the fantastic make One half our triumphs. Not in mighty things — The glorious offerings of our mind to fate — Do we ask homage to our vanities, One half so much as from the false and vain : The petty trifles that the social world Has fancied into grandeur."

"Real feeling is shy of expression;"

"There is something peculiarly lovely in the almond-blossom ; it brings the warmth of the rose on the last cold airs of winter, a rich and glowing wreath, when all beside is desolate : so frail, too, and so delicate, like a fairy emblem of those sweet and gentle virtues whose existence is first known in an hour of adversity."

"[From Constance’s letter]: Nothing but love can answer to love ; no affection, no kindness, no care, can supply its place : it is its own sweet want."

"[From Lady Mary Wortley Montague ]: Lawgivers were never more mistaken than when they ordained that the conjugal tie should last through life for better and worse ; the last injunction being strictly complied with. There should be septennial marriages, as well as septennial parliaments! … In life it is the irrevocable that is terrible : while there is change, there is hope. We should keep each other in much better order if, at the end of seven years, there were to be a reckoning of grievances. It would be a good moral lesson to many a husband, to come down on the seventh anniversary and find his tea not made, and his muffin not buttered. These are the things that come home to a man's feelings !"

"[From Lady Mary Wortley Montague]: It is very odd that quarrels, which are so pleasant in love, should be so odious in marriage. I believe it is that, in the first instance, they may have consequences ; in the last, they have none : your lover may fear to lose you ; your husband can only hope, and hope in vain : the lover dreads that every quarrel may be the last; the husband knows he may go on quarrelling to eternity !"

"How much of change lies in a little space ! How soon the spirits leave their youth behind ! The early green forsakes the bough ; the flowers, Nature's more fairy-like and fragile ones, Droop on the way-side, and the later leaves Have artifice and culture — so the heart : How soon its soft spring hours take darker hues ! And hopes, that were like rainbows, melt in shade ; While the fair future, ah ! how fair it seemed ! Grows dark and actual."

"This is one of the most unpleasant lessons that experience gives; and one, moreover, that it is perpetually giving; namely, that what we fancied was liking for ourselves, was in reality, the result of , calculation, or of amusement. We fancied we were liked, when we were only useful or entertaining."

"There is not a more bitter pang than that which accompanies the desire to befriend, and the inability of so doing."

"[From Lady Mary Wortley Montague]: A lover's quarrel is made up of jealousies, doubts, hopes, fears, and all sorts of fantastic fancies : a matrimonial dispute, on the contrary, is composed of familiar and ordinary matter, a sort of ventilator to the temper !"

"The room itself was large and dark, and had that peculiar air of discomfort which belongs to "ready furnished apartments :" every thing looks as if it had been bought at a sale, and there is an equal want of harmony both in the proportions and colours. … All the associations are those of poverty ; and of all human evils, poverty is the one whose suffering is the most easily understood : even those who have never known it, can comprehend its wretchedness. Hunger, cold, and mortification, the disunion of families ; the separation of those the most fondly attached ; youth bowed by premature toil ; age wasting the little strength yet remaining : — these are the familiar objects which surround poverty."

"Love is a thing of frail and delicate growth ; Soon checked, soon fostered ; feeble, and yet strong : It will endure much, suffer long, and bear What would weigh down an angel's wing to earth, And yet mount heavenward ; but not the less It dieth of a word, a look, a thought ; And when it dies, it dies without a sign To tell how fair it was in happier hours ; It leaves behind reproaches and regrets. And bitterness within affection's well, For which there is no healing."

"[From Lord Marchmont]: Are you aware that I have, for a week past, been in the opposition ? But I own it is too much to expect that women should understand these matters."

"Unbroken worldly prosperity has a natural tendency to harden the sympathies : when life comes so easily to ourselves, it is difficult to fancy it going hardly with others. Without any permanent object for exertion of any kind, we are apt soon to sink into habits of indolent indulgence, and such are inevitably selfish."

"These are the things that fret away the heart Cold, careless trifles ; but not felt the less For mingling with the hourly acts of life."

"Faint and more faint amid the world of dreams, That which once my all, thy image seems, Pale as a star that in the morning gleams."

"How often, in this cold and bitter world, Is the warm heart thrown back upon itself! Cold, careless, are we of another's grief; We wrap ourselves in sullen selfishness."

"... vanity is like a creeping plant, which begins by turning its lithe foliage round a single window, and ends by covering the whole edifice :"

"Both had a great deal to say, and yet the conversation languished ; but we have all felt this after a long absence : confidence is a habit, and requires to be renewed. We have lost the custom of telling every thing; and we begin to fear that what we have to tell is scarcely worth being told. We have formed new acquaintances ; we have entered into other amusements; we feel that our tastes are altered; and we require a little while to see if the change be mutual."

"The imaginative temperament is full of vivid creations, of fanciful imagery, and sudden thoughts, all of which are impelled by their nature to communication ; and to find that this communication interests or amuses, is a powerful stimulus. The vanity is at once encouraged and gratified ; while the present small triumph is too readily taken as earnest for a greater one. The vanity I speak of, is vanity of the highest and best kind ; it belongs to the class of our most ethereal emotions ; it asks "golden opinions from all ranks of men," because it is keenly susceptible, and has an even feminine craving for sympathy ; it asks not so much praise as appreciation; it is generous and self-devoted : still it is vanity. There is also in mental exertion an absolute necessity for re-action : how often do the thoughts, long confined to one subject, crave, as it were, to spring out of themselves, or to run off in any opposite direction !"

"... the green solitude of the Temple garden is the very place ... We leave the crowded street behind : we linger for a moment beside the little fountain, … It is, I believe, our only fountain, and all the associations of a fountain are poetical. It carries us to the East, and the stately halls of the caliphs rise on the mind's eye ; and we think over the thousand and one stories which made our childhood so happy, and stored up a world of unconscious poetry for our future years: or else it conjures up the graceful old Italian histories of moonlight festivals, when the red wine was cooled, and the lute echoed by the soft sound of falling waters. We leave the world of reality behind us for that of romance. That little fountain keeps, with its music, the entrance, as if to lull all more busy cares before we enter that quiet garden. Once entered in, how much lies around to subdue the troubled present with the mighty past! The river is below, with its banks haunted by memory."

"To see much of mankind sickens the philosopher and the poet; only in solitude can he continue to work for their benefit, or to crave for their sympathy."