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This is a list of Victorian Quotations, from authors such as Charles Dickens and Edith Wharton, to leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, and many others. If you have a quote that you think should appear on this page, please send it to AthtenaIris@aol.com.
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Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's charecter, give him power.
~Abraham Lincoln

It takes two flints to make a fire.
~Lousia May Alcott

Look twice before you leap.
~Charlotte Bronte

When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we donot see the ones which open for us.
~Alexander Graham Bell

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
~George Bernard Shaw

Blows are sarcasms turned stupid.
~George Eliot

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent presipitation.
~Thomas Alva Edison

Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
~Mark Twain

It takes very little fire to make a great deal of smoke nowadays, and notoriety is not real glory.
~Lousia May Alcott

You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
~George Bernard Shaw

In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
~Edith Wharton

Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves.
~Charlotte Bronte

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
~Mark Twain

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
~Jane Austen

A compliment is like a kiss through a veil.
~Victor Hugo

Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honors!
~Lousia May Alcott

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us.
~George Eliot

If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.
~Edith Wharton

Always do right! This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
~Mark Twain

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, 1850, line 27, stanza 4

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
~Charles Dickens, opening line of A Tale of Two Cities

I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
~Arthur Conan Doyle

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
~George Bernard Shaw

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.
~Vincent Van Gogh

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.
~Victor Hugo, Ninetythree, 1874

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
~Mark Twain

That a man is successful who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much, who has gained the respect of the intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
~Victor Hugo

The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master- something that at time strangely wills and works for itself.
~Charlotte Bronte

It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it.
~Robert E. Lee

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
~Charles Dickens, end of A Tale of Two Cities

The best way to know God is to love many things.
~Vincent van Gogh

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
~Mark Twain

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
~Victor Hugo

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.
~Arthur Conan Doyle, Complete Sherlock Holmes, Valley of Fear

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
~George Bernard Shaw

And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness, Round our restlessness His rest.
~Elizabeth Barret Browning, Rhyme of the Duchess.

Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it.
~Aberham Lincoln

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
~Edith Wharton

That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
~Aberham Lincoln

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.
~Charlotte Bronte

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,--
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
~Edgar A. Poe, The Raven

Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
~Jane Austen

There are two ways of spreading light: To be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
~Edith Wharton

Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.
~Charlotte Bronte

One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil. To think is to do.
~Victor Hugo
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That is the last of my Victorian Quotation collection. If you want you may