Quotes from Mary Elizabeth Braddon

And now the senna and camomile were to flavour all her life. She was no longer to enjoy that mystical double existence, those delicious glimpses of dreamland, which made up for all the dulness of the common world that surrounded her.

By this time it was dark, the candle carried by Robert only making one nucleus of light as he moved about holding it before the pictures one by one. The broad, bare window looked out upon the pale sky, tinged with the last cold flicker of the twilight. The ivy rustled against the glass with the same ominous shiver as that which agitated every leaf in the garden, prophetic of the storm that was to come.

George fell back immediately. He took no more interest in any lady's picture than in all the other wearinesses of this troublesome world. He fell back, and leaning his forehead against the window-panes, looked out at the night.

As he sat in the deep embrasure of a mullioned window, talking to my lady, his mind wandered away to shady Figtree Court, and he thought of poor George Talboys smoking his solitary cigar in the room with the birds and canaries.

Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea.

Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-contained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no colour from the outer world.

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.

There were many beautiful vipers in those days and she was one of them. ("Eveline's Visitant")

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.

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.

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?

They were dreamers—and they dreamt themselves into the cemetery.

He was a square, pale-faced man of almost forty, and had the appearance of having outlived every emotion to which humanity is subject.

and he knew that our dreams are none the less terrible to lose, because they have never been the realities for which we have mistaken them.

You seem to have quite a taste for discussing these horrible subjects," she said, rather scornfully; "you ought to have been a detective police officer." "I sometimes think I should have been a good one." "Why?" "Because I am patient.

Do you think I will suffer myself to be baffled?

What have you to do with hearts, except for dissection?

He was a student - such things as happened to him, happen sometimes to students. He was a German - such things as happened to him, happen sometimes to Germans. He was young, handsome, studious, enthusiastic, metaphysical, reckless, unbelieving, heartless. And being young, handsome, and eloquent he was beloved. ("The Cold Embrace")

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 his torments and wonder why he takes the common fever so badly.

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.

For you see 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

We are apt to be angry with this cruel hardness in our life—this unflinching regularity in the smaller wheels and meaner mechanism of the human machine, which knows no stoppage or cessation, though the mainspring be forever hollow, and the hands pointing to purposeless figures on a shattered dial.

Justice to the dead first," he said; "mercy to the living afterward.

The Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' We repeated the holy sentences of resignation; but it was not resignation, it was despair that subdued the violence of our grief.