Complete Novels of Charlotte Mary Yonge Quotes

“It has not hurt,’ musingly repeated Leonard. ‘No, she is beyond the reach of distracting temptations and sorrows; it has only made her brighter to have suffered what it breaks one’s heart to think of. It has not hurt.’ ‘Nothing from without does hurt!’ said Ethel, ‘unless one lets it.’ ‘Hurt what?’ he asked. ‘The soul,’ returned Ethel. ‘Mind and body may be hurt, and it is not possible to know one’s mind from one’s soul while one is alive, but as long as the will and faith are right, to think the soul can be hurt seems to me like doubting our Protector.”
― Charlotte Mary Yonge, Complete Novels of Charlotte Mary Yonge

“Picciola!’ said the Doctor to himself; and aloud, ‘Then you have time to enjoy them?’ ‘When we are at work at a distance, dinner is brought out, and there is an hour and a half of rest; and on Sunday we may walk about the yards. You should have seen one of our gang, when I got him to look at the chevaux de frise round a bud, how he owned it was a regular patent invention; it just answered to Paley’s illustration.”
― Charlotte Mary Yonge, Complete Novels of Charlotte Mary Yonge

“This night is my departing night,      For here nae longer must I stay; There’s neither friend nor foe of mine      But wishes me away. What I have done through lack of wit,      I never, never can recall: I hope ye’re all my friends as yet.      Good night, and joy be with you all.                  Armstrong’s Good Night”
― Charlotte Mary Yonge, Complete Novels of Charlotte Mary Yonge

“Yes, yes, I know, Harry; but to think how little we knew, or thought, or felt — going on in our own way when you were in such danger and suffering!’ ‘Wasn’t I very glad you were going on in your own way!’ said Harry. ‘Why, Mary, it was that which did it — it has been always that thought of you at the Minster every day, that kept me to reading the Psalms, and so having the book about me. And did not it do one good to lie and think of the snug room, and my father’s spectacles, and all as usual? When they used to lay me on the deck of the Dexter at night, because I could not breathe below, I used to watch old Orion, who was my great friend in the Loyalty Isles, and wish the heathen name had not stuck to the old fellow, he always seemed so like the Christian warrior, climbing up with his shield before him and his. A home like this is a shield to a man in more ways than one, Mary. Hollo, was that the street door?”
― Charlotte Mary Yonge, Complete Novels of Charlotte Mary Yonge

“With Henry she had less in common. He expected of her what she had not learnt, and was not willing to acquire. A man interfering in the woman’s province meets little toleration; and Henry was extremely precise in his requirements of exact order, punctuality, and excellence, in all the arrangements of his house. While breaking her in to housekeeping, he made himself appear almost in the light of a task-master — and what was worse, of a despised task-master. Averil thought she could not respect a brother whose displeasure was manifested by petulance, not sternness, and who cared not only about his dinner, but about the tidy appearance of the drawing-room —”
― Charlotte Mary Yonge, Complete Novels of Charlotte Mary Yonge

“You, who taught us to love our Walter Scott next to our “Christian Year,” and who gave us half-crowns for rehearsing him when other children were learning the Robin’s Petition, what think you of this poor boy Leonard knowing few of the novels and none of the poems? No wonder the taste of the day is grovelling lower and lower, when people do not begin with the pure high air of his world! To take up one of his works after any of our present school of fiction is like getting up a mountain side after a feverish drawing-room or an offensive street. If it were possible to know the right moment for a book to be really tasted — not thrust aside because crammed down — no, it would not be desirable, as I was going to say, we should only do double mischief. We”
― Charlotte Mary Yonge, Complete Novels of Charlotte Mary Yonge

“I thought no one complained unless to get a thing remedied.’ ‘Exactly so. That is man! And experience never shows man that woman’s growls relieve her soul, and that she dreads nothing more than their being acted on! All I wish is, that this scheme may die a natural death; but I should be miserable, and deserved to be so, if I raised a finger to hinder it. What, must you go? Rule Daisy’s lines if she writes to Meta, please.”
― Charlotte Mary Yonge, Complete Novels of Charlotte Mary Yonge

“I do not seem to have felt anything yet,’ said Averil, passing her hands over her face. ‘I seem to be made of stone.’ ‘You have done: and that is better than feeling.”
― Charlotte Mary Yonge, Complete Novels of Charlotte Mary Yonge

“Quand on veut dessecher un marais, on ne fait pas voter les grenouilles. — Mme. EMILE. DE GIRADIN”
― Charlotte Mary Yonge, Complete Novels of Charlotte Mary Yonge