Ann Radcliffe Quotes

“Happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult.”

“How short a period often reverses the character of our sentiments, rendering that which yesterday we despised, today desirable.”

“I wish that all those, who on this night are not merry enough to speak before they think, may ever after be grave enough to think before they speak!”

“A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within.”

“Do you believe your heart to be, indeed, so hardened, that you can look without emotion on the suffering, to which you would condemn me?”

“How strange it is, that a fool or a knave, with riches, should be treated with more respect by the world, than a good man, or a wise man in poverty!”

“I ought not to doubt the steadiness of your affection, yet such is the inconsistency of real love, that it is always awake to suspicion, however unreasonable; always requiring new assurances from the object of its interest, and thus it is, that I always feel revived, as by a new conviction, when your words tell me I am dear to you; and, wanting these, I relapse into doubt, and too often into despondency.”

“Such is the inconsistency of real love, that it is always awake to suspicion, however unreasonable; always requiring new assurances from the object of its interest.”

“The sympathy expressed in the tone of his voice and manner, proved that his happiness, on this occasion, almost equalled her own.”

“When her mind was discomposed... a book was the opiate that lulled it to repose.”