Mary Shelley
I, too, can create desolation. — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. Published 1818 (Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones)
Category: Gothic
Oscar Wilde
Beauty is a form of Genius–is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It… Continue reading Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to… Continue reading Oscar Wilde
Emily Brontë
I’m tired, tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it. — Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights. (Thomas Cautley Newby December 1847)
Oscar Wilde
She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through fire, and what… Continue reading Oscar Wilde
Charlotte Brontë
I have little left in myself – I must have you. The world may laugh – may call me absurd, selfish – but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame. — Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre. (Smith, Elder & Co. 16… Continue reading Charlotte Brontë
H.P. Lovecraft
But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false? — H.P. Lovecraft, The Street (1920, The Wolverine)
Flannery O’Connor
Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place… Nothing outside you can give you any place… In yourself right now is all… Continue reading Flannery O’Connor
Charlotte Brontë
And it is you, spirit–with will and energy, and virtue and purity–that I want, not alone with your brittle frame. ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre. (Penguin Classics; 9th Printing edition February 4, 2003) Originally published October 16th 1847.
Walter de la Mare
God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise. ― Walter de la Mare, The Return. (Dover Publications; First Thus edition, July 18, 1997) Originally ublished 1910.
The Vale of Soul-Making 