Quotes from Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Life is such a very troublesome matter, when all is said and done, that it's as well even to take its blessings quietly.

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.

Why is it so difficult to love wisely, so easy to love too well?

Exceptional talent does not always win its reward unless favoured by exceptional circumstances.

How chronic is the unconcern of men and women of the world!

A priest can achieve great victories with an army of women at his command.

There was something wrong in that, Master Darrell," she said reproachfully. "There was a gay wedding a year ago at Compton church, and very grand and very handsome everything was; and sure the bride looked very lovely; but one thing was wrong, and that was the bridegroom.

The law, which even in those hard days — popularly known as the good old times, by the way — was supposed to regard an accused person as innocent until his or her guilt was duly established, did not afford the suspected individual much opportunity of proving that innocence. The prisoner's counsel was not allowed to plead for his client.

The wind came whistling up across the frosty open country, and through the leafless woods, and rattled fiercely at the window-frames.

The past is all forgiven long ago, dear Ringwood," said his sister earnestly; "it would be ill for brother and sister if the love between them could not outlive old injuries, and be the brighter and the truer for old sorrows.

He looked gloomily out of the misty window, opaque with the breath of himself and an elderly Indian officer, who was his only companion, and watched the fleeting landscape, which had a certain phantom-like appearance in its shroud of snow. He wrapped himself in the vast folds of his railway rug, with a peevish shiver, and felt inclined to quarrel with the destiny which compelled him to travel by an early train upon a pitiless winter's day.

It was by this outlet that Lady Audley meant to make her escape. She could easily remove the bar and unfasten the shutter, and she might safely venture to leave the window ajar while she was absent.

I have been afraid of you, Mr. Robert Audley," she thought, "but perhaps the time may come in which you will have cause to be afraid of me.

I wonder sometimes to see the trouble a man'll take before he gets a pair o' boots, to find out as they're a good fit and won't gall his foot when he comes to wear 'em; but t' same man'll go and get married as careless and off-hand like, as if there weren't the smallest chance of his wife's not suiting him.

I was three-and-thirty years of age. Youth was quite gone; beauty I had never possessed; and I was content to think of myself as a confirmed old maid, a quiet spectator of life's great drama, disturbed by no feverish desire for an active part in the play.

Everything had a subdued and neutral tint; life at its best was calm and colourless, like a grey sunless day in early autumn, serene but joyless.

And then came a long interregnum devoted to the arts and mysteries of the toilet.

Assisted and attended by her younger sister Laura, who was a kind of slave to her - a very colourless young lady in mind, capable of no such thing as an original opinion, and in person a pale replica of her sister.

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.

The coachman led his wretched horses into the courtyard, and piloted the vehicle to the principal doorway of the house, a great mansion of gray stone, with several long ranges of windows, many of which were dimly lighted, and looked out like the pale eyes of weary watchers upon the darkness of the night.

My lady, watchful and quiet as the cold stars in the wintry sky, looked up at these casements with an earnest and scrutinizing gaze. One of the windows was shrouded by a scanty curtain of faded red; and upon this curtain there went and came a dark shadow, the shadow of a woman with a fantastic head dress, the shadow of a restless creature, who paced perpetually backward and forward before the window.

It all came back. Yes, it came back. For the last two months it had ceased to be; it had been blotted out—hidden, forgotten; there had been no such thing. An enchanter's wand had been waved above that dreary square-built house in the dusty lane, and a fairy palace had arisen for her habitation; a fairy-land of beauty and splendour had spread itself around her, a paradise in which she wandered hand in hand with a demigod.

It may be, that the hour when any event, however startling, however painful, could move her from this cold serenity, had for ever passed away. It may be, that having outlived all the happiness of her life, she had almost outlived the faculty of feeling or of suffering, and must henceforth exist only for the world — a distinguished actress in the great comedy of fashionable life.

The widower only sighed and puffed his cigar fiercely out of the open window. Perhaps he was thinking of that far-away time—little better than five years ago, in fact; but such an age gone by to him—when he first met the woman for whom he had worn crape round his hat three days before.