36 quotes
You can make no excuse for his love, that fatal irresistible passion, which outweighs truth and honour when they are set in the opposite scale.
Fenton's Quest (1871)
A woman's love is such a capricious thing, and so often bestowed upon the least deserving amongst those who seek it.
Fenton's Quest (1871)
I consider any man a fool who allows himself to be captivated by a pretty face.
Fenton's Quest (1871)
Miss Lucy Graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination, by which a woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile.
Lady Audley's Secret (1862)
Do you think I will suffer myself to be baffled?
Lady Audley's Secret (1862)
What have you to do with hearts, except for dissection?
Who has not been, or is not to be mad in some lonely hour of life? Who is quite safe from the trembling of the balance?
Lady Audley's Secret (1862)
He was a square, pale-faced man of almost forty, and had the appearance of having outlived every emotion to which humanity is subject.
Lady Audley's Secret (1862)
"Why, I can't help smiling at people, and speaking prettily to them. I know I'm no better than the rest of the world; but I can't help it if I'm pleasanter. It's constitutional."
Lady Audley's Secret (1862)
The wind came whistling up across the frosty open country, and through the leafless woods, and rattled fiercely at the window-frames.
Lady Audley's Secret (1862)
The disease which was undermining Lady Cecil’s moral constitution was not sorrow; it was only the absence of joy.
The Lady's Mile (1866)
And then came a long interregnum devoted to the arts and mysteries of the toilet.
Self-assertion may deceive the ignorant for a time; but when the noise dies away, we cut open the drum, and find it was emptiness that made the music.
Aurora Floyd (1863)
Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-constrained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no color from the outer world.
Lady Audley's Secret (1862)
There were many beautiful vipers in those days and she was one of them.
They were dreamers—and they dreamt themselves into the cemetery.
That he will haunt the footsteps of his enemy after death is the one revenge which a dying man can promise himself; and if men had power thus to avenge themselves the earth would be peopled with phantoms.
He forgot that love, which is a madness, and a scourge, and a fever, and a delusion, and a snare, is also a mystery, and very imperfectly understood by everyone except the individual sufferer who writhes under its tortures.
Lady Audley's Secret (1862)
Now love is so very subtle an essence, such an indefinable metaphysical marvel, that its due force, though very cruelly felt by the sufferer himself, is never clearly understood by those who look on at its torments and wonder why he takes the common fever so badly.
Lady Audley's Secret (1862)
I am no believer in visions or omens. After all, I would sooner fancy that I was dreaming – dreaming with my eyes open as I stood at the window – than that I beheld the shadows of the dead.