Quotes from Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Old persons are sometimes as unwilling to die as tired-out children are to say good night and go to bed.

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.

Old persons are sometimes as unwilling to die as tired-out children are to say good night and go to bed.

There was a coldness, it seemed to me, beyond her years, in her smiling melancholy persistent refusal to afford me the least ray of light. I cannot say we quarreled upon this point, for she would not quarrel upon any. It was, of course, very unfair of me to press her, very ill-bred, but I really could not help it; and I might just as well have let it alone. What she did tell me amounted, in my unconscionable estimation--to nothing.

It was long before the terror of recent events subsided; and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alternations—sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door.

truth I know not why I am so sad. It wearies me: you say it wearies you; But how I got it--came by it.

Pero los sueños atraviesan los muros de piedra, iluminan las habitaciones vacías y oscurecen las iluminadas, y los personajes que intervienen en el sueño entran y salen a placer, burlándose de los cerrojos.

Knowledge is power-and power of one sort or another is the secret lust of human souls; and here is, beside the sense of exploration, the undefinable interest of a story, and above all, something forbidden, to stimulate the contumacious appetite.

Women are so enigmatical – some in everything – all in matters of the heart. Don't they sometimes actually admire what is repulsive?...

Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its towers, and its Gothic chapel.

The mind is a different organ by night and by day.

The air was still. The silvery vapour hung serenely on the far horizon, and the frosty stars blinked brightly. Everyone knows the effect of such a scene on a mind already saddened. Fancies and regrets float mistily in the dream, and the scene affects us with a strange mixture of memory and anticipation, like some sweet old air heard in the distance.

I can not help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.

Boating, my dear Mrs. Bedel, is the dullest of all things; don't you think so? Because a boat looks very pretty from the shore, we fancy that the shore must look very pretty from a boat; and when we try it, we find we have only got down into a pit and can see nothing rightly. For my part, I hate boating and I hate the water...

Young people like, and even love, on impulse.

It stands on a slight eminence

I believe the entire natural world is but the ultimate expression of that spiritual world from which, and in which alone, it has its life.

There is a faculty in man that will acknowledge the unseen. He may scout and scare religion from him; but if he does, superstition perches near.

At another time, or in another case, it might have excited my ridicule. But into what quackeries will not people rush for a last chance, where all accustomed means have failed, and the life of a beloved object is at stake?

Pen, ink, and paper are cold vehicles for the marvellous, and a "reader" decidedly a more critical animal than a "listener.

what storm-benighted traveller, when fierce winds and rains are lashing around his lodging, can withstand the cheering influences of a glorious log-fire?

The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your English miles to the left.

In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss.

I should tell you all with pleasure,' said the General, 'but you would not believe me.' 'Why should I not?' he asked. 'Because', he answered testily, 'you believe in nothing but what consists with your own prejudices and illusions. I remember when I was like you, but I have learned better.