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There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it.

— Sheridan Le Fanu Uncle Silas (1864)

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More quotes by Sheridan Le Fanu

"The world," he resumed after a short pause, "has no faith in any man's conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge."

Uncle Silas (1864)

There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down.

Uncle Silas (1864)

Whenever you employ a force of any sort, to carry a point of real importance, reject all nice calculations of economy. Better to be a thousand per cent over the mark, than the smallest fraction of a unit under it.

How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long – the care of cares – the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven – and straight you find a new stratum there.

Uncle Silas (1864)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Sheridan Le Fanu (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.