Stephanie Barron > Quotes

“There is something so INEVITABLE about seven-and-twenty; it is decidedly on the wrong side of the decade for a lady, particularly an unmarried one.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

“The landscape artist had captured a distant prospect of an ancient hillside, surmounted by cyprus and a few tumbled columns; the mood was one of desolation and peace, a glorious past recalled, and now thankfully put to rest. ”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Genius of the Place

“There is nothing like a bit of ink to bring reason to the most disordered mind.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas

“Is lawlessness to be permitted, simply because it is effected with a certain style? Jane, Jane! Where are your finer sensibilities? All o'erthrown, by a man with a golden tongue and a mocking glance?”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Man of the Cloth

“It is ever thus. We find the words to speak when all hope of converse is past.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

“...life's burdens may only be overcome by a summoning of inner resources: by a dependence not upon others, but upon the qualities of spirit and mind.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House

“Providence, assuredly, is a mysterious mover, and who is Jane to ignore it's direction?”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Man of the Cloth

“A great deal of hurt has been done in the name of honesty,”
― Stephanie Barron, That Churchill Woman

“...the long blue shadows of afternoon advanced before me like cheerful ghosts of last summer's growth, dancing past the withered flower borders and the stiff hedges to fall at the feet of a stone nymph, her cascade of water frozen in her urn.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

“The world, however bleak I have found it in the last few weeks, must nonetheless be formed of goodness, if but a few moments in Nature’s company may suffice to renew one’s health and mental aspect.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

“To be continually underestimated is a woman's lot.”
― Stephanie Barron

“The novelist’s perception of motive and character is equally suited to the penetration of human deceit. I am determined never to apologise for my talents in either.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas

“I was treated once more to a novelist's valuable lesson, however—in apprehending that one's perception of plot and character are influenced entirely by one's own experience. To hear Mary tell the story of our Christmas at The Vyne, one would have thought that she was hounded by violence from first to last—perceived more than anybody of the nature of the probable murderer—and barely escaped with her life. It was a lesson in writerly humility. We are each the heroines of our own lives.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas

“Anonymity may be a powerful drug; it is as well we do not taste too much of it in our daily lives.”
― Stephanie Barron

“Is it too absurd? It must, it cannot be other, than the fevered conjectures of my brain, quite overpowered by the sudden loss. And so I will put down my pen, and make an end to activity, in the hope that silence may be as balm, and isolation relieve despair.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Wandering Eye

“The little fever of envy, once caught, is the ruin of all happiness.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas

“Lord”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Wandering Eye

“Topsy-turvy is the only order of the day—or night, as it happens—on the Eve of the Epiphany. My brother is not far wrong in seeing Twelfth Night as a threat to decency. For women are expected to dress as men, and men, as women. Children hold court at the Children’s Ball, with their parents as toad-eating subjects. Servants are permitted to sauce their masters. Grooms may kiss the Lady of the Manor—provided they present a sprig of mistletoe.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas

“We cannot expect the men we appoint to govern us, to be better than ourselves.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

“As the parlour clock began to strike twelve, I opened the kitchen door to let the Old Year out. Then I hurried along the passage to the parsonage hall, and on the stroke of twelve, threw wide the front door to let the New Year in.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas

“The fate of all things cherished and expensive, to be lost at hazard, and well before their time”
― Stephanie Barron

“As it was, I constrained myself to say only what was both honest and inoffensive—and thus, said very little at all.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas

“My dear Jane, if you have not understood, by this time, that I love but one woman in the world--then we have nothing further to say.
~Lord Harold Trowbridge”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

“But, Jane,” she whispered low in my ear as she passed, “do you be careful. She is French, after all, and may very well be a murderess, and must possess arts you can know nothing of.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Man of the Cloth

“I cannot know what it is to be beautiful and possessed of easy means; my conquests have ever been made against the better instincts of the men in my acquaintance, a tribute to my lively mind and good humour.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

“I watched him wave from the back of his hired mare and clatter off down the silent streets of Hans Town in a westerly direction; and reflected that there are few sights so gratifying to a female eye, as a handsome man in a well-made coat and hat, astride a horse on a spring morning.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Barque of Frailty

“Had she been less stately in her person, the gown might have been ravishing; but as it was, she appeared rather like an overlarge sweetmeat trundled through the room on a rolling cart.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

“The Reverend Brook-Edward Bridges is the sort of man I cannot help but despise,” she rejoined sharply. “He believes the world exists to sustain his follies, and ask nothing of him in return. My brother was spoilt as a youth, and age has merely made him indolent. He sponges on my mother and my husband for the relief of his debts, and is foolish enough to believe that he might prevail upon an excellent woman to make his fortune in marriage. Yes, Jane, I am severe upon him—for he has disappointed me these fifteen years at least.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Genius of the Place

“She could not give him power over her. She gave no man that. “I don’t deal in bonds, sir,” she called back over her shoulder as she fled for the stables. “They’re too much like chains.”
― Stephanie Barron, That Churchill Woman

“Much may preserve her from a state such as mine—growing old, unloved, and unprovided-for. And yet I am only ten years her senior. Only ten years!—Of balls, and flirtations, and new dresses and fashions; of disappointments, broken hearts, and fading hopes. I shall be nine-and-twenty next Christmas; and Lucy only just embarked upon her ten years. I would not wish them to end as mine have done.”
― Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Man of the Cloth