Victorian quotes

'The firm'a proud Victorian word.It evokes the lost sense of Victorian regard for the pride of people in their daily trade.

- Sir V(ictor) S(awdon) Pritchett
'Betjeman', in the NewYorker, 24 Jun.

The Englishwoman's clothes, too, have improved out of all knowledge†no longer are our hats, as inVictorian days, a kind of Pageant of Empire, whereon the products of all the colonies battle for precedence.

- Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
  EnglishWomen.

The historyof theVictorian age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historianignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.

- (Giles) Lytton Strachey
  EminentVictorians, preface.

Of all the great Victorian writers, he was probably the most antagonistic to theVictorian age itself.

- Edmund Wilson
  Of Dickens.TheWound and the Bow,'Dickens:TheTwo Scrooges'.