Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe Quotes

“The sweetness and fine expression of her voice attracted his attention to her figure, which had a distinguished air of delicacy and grace; but her face was concealed in her veil. So much indeed was he fascinated by the voice, that a most painful curiosity was excited as to her countenance, which he fancied must express all the sensibility of character that the modulation of her tones indicated.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“Ramsgate, Kent, in the early nineteenth century.  During the last twelve years of her life, Radcliffe suffered from a spasmodic asthma, calling for the unwearied attentions of her affectionate husband. In the hope of obtaining relief, they visited Ramsgate in the autumn of 1822. Radcliffe wrote her last piece of writing here.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“Even her romances, forming a class apart from all, which had gone before, and unapproached by imitators, wore a certain air of antiquity, and seemed scarcely to belong to the present age.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“answered, “No, no; I do not recollect any thing of what you tell me; but you were talking a little while ago of Hamlet and towers; now, if you want towers that would do honour to Hamlet, go to Warwick Castle, and if we reach it, as we hope, this night, you can walk from the inn while supper is preparing, and you will find, on the terrace or platform before the gates, towers frowning and majestic enough. If the moon is up, you will see them to perfection, and, as you are so fond of ghosts, you can hardly fail to make an assignation with one there.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“The Marchesa mused; for her conscience also was eloquent. She tried to overcome its voice, but it would be heard; and sometimes such starts of horrible conviction came over her mind, that she felt as one who, awaking from a dream, opens his eyes only to measure the depth of the precipice on which he totters. In such moments she was astonished, that she had paused for an instant upon a subject so terrible as that of murder. The sophistry of the Confessor, together with the inconsistencies which he had betrayed, and which had not escaped the notice of the Marchesa, even at the time they were uttered, though she had been unconscious of her own,”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“The early breeze sighing among the foliage, that waved high over the path, and the hollow dashing of distant waters, he listened to with complacency, for these were sounds which soothed yet promoted his melancholy mood; and he some times rested to gaze upon the scenery around him, for this too was in harmony with the temper of his mind. Disappointment had subdued the wilder energy of the passions, and produced a solemn and lofty state of feeling; he viewed with pleasing sadness the dark rocks and precipices, the gloomy mountains and vast solitudes, that spread around him; nor was the convent he was approaching a less sacred feature of the scene, as its gray walks and pinnacles appeared beyond the dusky groves.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“I am warned of evils that await me,” continued Vivaldi, musing; “of events that are regularly fulfilled; the being who warns me, crosses my path perpetually, yet, with the cunning of a demon, as constantly eludes my grasp, and baffles my pursuit! It is incomprehensible, by what means he glides thus away from my eye, and fades, as if into air, at my approach! He is repeatedly in my presence, yet is never to be found!”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“this ivy is of great thickness, and it is so old, that in some places, the branches are sapless and leafless, and the grey stalks seemed to crawl about the ruin in sympathy. Other remains of buildings partly connect the three sides of the court, and are intermingled and crowned with alder and ash plants. This view of the ruin was very striking; the three chief masses great and solemn, without being beautiful. They spoke at once to the imagination, with the force and simplicity of truth, the nothingness and brevity of this life— ‘generations have beheld us and passed away, as you now behold us, and shall pass away: they thought of the generations before them, as you now think of them, and as future ages shall think of you. We have witnessed this, yet we remain; the voices that revelled beneath us are heard no more, yet the winds of Heaven still sound in our ivy.’ And a still and solemn sound it was as we stood looking up at these walls.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“Oh GOD! thy great laws will one day be more fully known by thy creatures; we shall more fully understand Thee and ourselves. The GOD of order and of all this and of far greater grandeur, the Creator of that glorious sun, which never fails in its course, will not neglect us, His intelligent, though frail creatures, nor suffer us to perish, who have the consciousness of our mortal fate long before it arrives, and of HIM. He, who called us first from nothing, can again call us from death into life.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“Incited by the intellectual recompense of such a pursuit, Mrs. Radcliffe gave her romances in quick succession to the world: — her first work, “The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne,” was published in the year 1789; the “Sicilian Romance,” in 1790; the “Romance of the Forest,” in 1791; “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” in 1794; and “ The Italian,” in 1797.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“to the enjoyments of a writer of romance, conscious of inventive power. If in the mere perusal of novels we lose our painful sense of the realities of “this unimaginable world,” and delightedly participate in the sorrows, the joys, and the struggles of the persons, how far more intensely must an authoress like Mrs. Radcliffe feel that outgoing of the heart, by which individuality is multiplied, and we seem to pass a hundred lives!”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“In the twenty-third year of her age, Miss Ward was married to Mr. William Radcliffe, a graduate of Oxford, who, at one period, intended to follow the profession of the law, and, with that view, kept several terms at one of the Inns of Court, but who afterwards changed his purpose. The ceremony was performed at Bath, where her parents then resided, and she afterwards proceeded with her husband to live in the neighbourhood of London. Encouraged by him, she soon began to employ her leisure in writing; and, as her distrust of herself yielded to conscious success, proceeded with great rapidity. Mr. Radcliffe, about this time, became the proprietor of “The English Chronicle,”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“THE LIFE OF MRS. RADCLIFFE is a pleasing phenomenon in the literature of her time. During a period, in which the spirit of personality has extended its influence, till it has rendered the habits and conversation of authors almost as public as their compositions, she confined herself, with delicate apprehensiveness, to the circle of domestic duties and pleasures.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“Amongst them was the young Prince Edward; for he liked not to ride alone, in the order that had been settled for him, but came in pesle-mesle with the rest, and so busy with his mettlesome steed, that he noticed not the observance which, nathless all the hurly-burly, was paid to him by those, who rode near him.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“though but too well acquainted with the lawless and desperate manners of those days, yet refused to acknowledge, that a man of the Prior’s office and rank could be guilty of the crime.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“But now, being sore pressed upon by those about him — and it was ever his weakness to be ruled by those nearest at hand rather than by fixed principles either of his own, or of those wiser in council than himself — being sore pressed by the false representations of the wily Prior, he yielded his consent, that the Jury already warned should be summoned to attend in Court, this day, the trial of the poor stranger for divers practices of magical delusion and of the black art, in the great hall. Should they fail to substantiate this head of charge, the Prior had another in the tale he had already told the King of the merchant’s pretended attempt upon his life, and his evil practices upon the golden chain.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“It is well-known, that a weak mind, rather than have such a suffering, will turn aside, and take shelter in willing credulity to its first opinion; a strong one, meeting the worst at once, will proceed straight forward, and, freeing itself from an uncertainty, will do both that, which is just towards others, and, in the end, best for its own ease.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“But that, which most delighted the Queen’s ladies in these wild woods was to see the nimble squirrels climbing among the boughs, and springing from branch to branch, so full of happy life it was a pleasure to behold. And some, when they had gained the topmost boughs, would quietly sit, cracking the chesnuts and securely looking, with their full, quick eyes, on the company below. There, I fear, were some, overborne by their own evil passions and galled by the consciousness of them, who might look up to those poor animals, with momentary envy. And doubtless many, who had not these painful reasons for choice, thought it were better so to live amongst these woodlands, in blessed ease and sprightly health, than confined in the golden trammels of a court, where every feeling was checked, that it might move only to certain steps of order, and nature was so nearly forgotten, that, if perchance she did appear, she was pitied and reproved for a child of ignorance, and straight altered after their own fashion.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“the number of the robbers was three; they were most of them tall in stature; they wore cloaks about them, and had masks on their faces.” “Masks?” said the King. “Masks!” murmured the courtiers, with one voice. The King, daunting the accuser with the anger of his countenance, said, “You could swear to this knight, as one of the robbers, and yet you say, he had a mask on his face! I suspect you now for an impostor more than for a moody man. If it prove so, tremble! for I swear by my sword you shall not escape. I give you one more warning, to stop before you totally plunge into your ruin.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“Yes, and I perceive,” continued Willoughton, “that even you feel a curiosity to know what may have passed so many ages back, on the spot we now stand upon.” “Why,” acknowledged Simpson, “when one looks up at the very walls now crumbling into ruin, that were once so magnificent, and that inclosed beings with passions as warm as our own — beings, who have so long since vanished from the earth, one cannot help wishing to know a little of their history and of the scenes they witnessed; but, for your legend, I fear to trust it.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“Those walls, where gorgeous tapestry had hung, showed only the remains of door-ways and of beautiful gothic windows, that had admitted the light of the same sun, which at this moment sent the last gleam of another day upon Willoughton, and warned him, that another portion of his life too was departing. The melancholy scene around him spoke, with the simplicity of truth, the brevity and nothingness of this life. Those walls seemed to say— “Generations have beheld us and passed away, as you now behold us, and shall pass away. They have thought of the generations before their time, as you now think of them, and as future ones shall think of you. The voices, that revelled beneath us, the pomp of power, the magnificence of wealth, the grace of beauty, the joy of hope, the interests of high passion and of low pursuits have passed from this scene for ever; yet we remain, the spectres of departed years and shall remain, feeble as we are, when you, who now gaze upon us, shall have ceased to be in this world!”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“Alas!” said he, “that enchanting vision is no more found, except in the very heart of a populous city, and then neither by the glimmering of the dawn, nor by the glow of evening, but by the paltry light of stage-lamps. Yet there, surrounded by a noisy multitude, whose cat-calls often piped instead of the black-bird, I have found myself transported into the wildest region of poetry and solitude; while here, on the very spot where Shakspeare drew, I am suddenly let down from the full glow of my holiday-feelings into the plain reality of this work-a-day world.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“Henry III (1207–1272) was the son and successor of King John, reigning for 56 years from 1216 until his death.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“The Gaston de Blondeville was written in the early ninteenth century, but published posthumously in 1826 by Henry Colburn, three years after Radcliffe’s death.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“The Italian was published in 1797 and is considered the novel where Radcliffe’s talents for describing nature and focusing on the sublime reached its peak of sophistication. The importance of the idea of the sublime and the ability of nature to awaken it are crucial to the author’s philosophy. The success of Radcliffe’s previous works enabled her to receive a payment of eight hundred pounds for her original manuscript, a very sizable sum for a novel at that time.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“You see,” said Paulo, when they had departed, and he came to himself again, “you see how people get through their misfortunes, if they have but a heart to bear up against them, and do nothing that can lie on their conscience afterwards; and how suddenly one comes to be happy, just when one is beginning to think one never is to be happy again!”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“This man, of a nature too humane for his situation, was become wretched in it, and he determined mined to escape from his office before the expiration of the time for which he had been engaged. He thought that to be a guard over prisoners was nearly as miserable as being a prisoner himself. “I see no difference between them,” said he, “except that the prisoner watches on one side of the door, and the centinel on the other.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“That any human being should willingly afflict a fellow being who had never injured, or even offended him; that, unswayed by passion, he should deliberately become the means of torturing him, appeared to Vivaldi nearly incredible!”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“At some distance from the tribunal stood a large iron frame, which Vivaldi conjectured to be the rack, and near it another, resembling, in shape, a coffin, but, happily, he could not distinguish through the remote obscurity, any person undergoing actual suffering. In the vaults beyond, however, the diabolical decrees of the inquisitors seemed to be fulfilling; for, whenever a distant door opened for a moment, sounds of lamentation issued forth, and men, whom he judged to be familiars, habited like those who stood beside him, were seen passing to and fro within.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe

“Why, that is just what he would say, Signor; but bad deeds will out, whether people like them to be known or not. This man comes to our town sometimes to market, and nobody knew where he came from for a long while; so they set themselves to work and found it out at last.”
― Ann Radcliffe, Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe