Frederick Rolfe Quotes

1860–1913 England

Frederick William Rolfe (22 July 1860 – 25 October 1913) was an English novelist, short-story writer, eccentric, and would-be Roman Catholic priest. He preferred to be known either as Father Rolfe or as Baron Corvo.

England
Novelists
Painters
Short story writers

Random Frederick Rolfe quote

7 quotes

An appeal to a goodness which is not in him is, to a vain and sensitive soul, a stinging insult.

Hadrian the Seventh (1904)

That cold white candent voice which was more caustic than silver nitrate and more thrilling than a scream.

Hadrian the Seventh (1904)

He took the imperial hand and shook it in the glad-to-see-you-but-keep-off English fashion.

Hadrian the Seventh (1904)

Pray for the repose of His soul. He was so tired.

Hadrian the Seventh (1904)

Most people have only half developed their single personalities. That a man should split his into four and more; and should develop each separately and perfectly, was so abnormal that many normals failed to understand it.

Hadrian the Seventh (1904)

Brisk and prompt to war, soft and not in the least able to resist calamity, fickle in catching at schemes, and always striving after novelties – French characteristics remained unaltered twenty centuries after Julius Caesar made a note of them for all time.

Hadrian the Seventh (1904)

It's all nonsense to say that the Fifteenth Century can't possibly speak to the Twentieth, because it is the Fifteenth and not the Twentieth, and because those two Centuries haven't got a Common Denominator. They have. It's Human Nature.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Frederick Rolfe (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.