Edwardian Quotes & Sayings

I'm sorry," he said in a soft voice while leaning closer to her, "for taking liberties earlier. I hope I didn't offend you."

"You kissed me," she answered, equally quietly, then laughed out loud. "I was a little shocked at first, perhaps, but I'm over it."

"Over it?" His heart sank. Not the reaction he'd hoped. Perhaps he was out of practice.

"I rather enjoyed it, if you must know. It has been a long time since I've had such a kiss. Nothing like a bold and lingering kiss. How I've missed it. Ah, now you look shocked. Good. I've had my revenge. — Sherri Browning

What's really interesting is when you get a brand-new wave that has no connection to anything else. It always reflects society. The flappers would cut the dresses and make them looser, they smoked, their hair was short. It was a rebellion against the corset and the Edwardian era. — Annie Lennox

Language is changing constantly; printing and modern education have slowed it but have not stopped it. Given all this change, when, exactly, was language PERFECT, in the language pundit's mind? One has the feeling that the decline-mongers would feel rather sheepish has reading any answer. The 1950s? The Edwardian era? The real answer, however rarely expressed, seems to be when Island it as a young person. — Robert Lane Greene

The reason I wanted to do 'The First Men in the Moon' was that there is something so challenging in the combination of space travel and the Edwardian period. — Mark Gatiss

Two of my theatres are 1930s and the other five are by Sprague, the greatest Edwardian architect of the lot. They've needed a lot of work doing to them but they were built very well. — Cameron Mackintosh

WWI is a romantic war, in all senses of the word. An entire generation of men and women left the comforts of Edwardian life to travel bravely, and sometimes even jauntily, to almost certain death. At the very least, any story or novel about WWI is about innocence shattered in the face of experience. — Anita Shreve

Tea at the Ritz is the last delicious morsel of Edwardian London. The light is kind, the cakes are frivolous and the tempo is calm, confident and leisurely. — Helen Simpson

On the face of it, no one could have been less equipped for the job than these gently nurtured girls who walked straight out of Edwardian drawingrooms into the manifold horrors of the First World War. — Lyn Macdonald

It's hard being gay in Edwardian times. — Rob James-Collier

As a young man he seemed to pine for a bygone world of aristocrats. [In his twenties, he] took to wearing Edwardian three-piece suits with a pocket watch and chain.

[discussing Kip Forbes] — Benjamin Wallace

The great white sharks with their rough, pale sides, the killer whales striped in black and white like an Edwardian garden chaise. — Cassandra Clare

Pride of place in my wardrobe is an Edwardian-style Norfolk Jacket in Derby Tweed. It is silk-lined with leather-clad buttons and has a smell that reminds me of wet moss and fallen leaves. — Fennel Hudson

I suppose," continued Nate, "it's not Bertie's fault that he lacks the physical stature to carry a delicate young woman such as yourself a good distance. I believe he did not care to see you within the folds of my arms which were reluctant to release you, for I thought I would never see you again... — Margie Bayer

As for Crowley, his reputation grew and grew. His gospel of "Do what thou wilt" - modified and transformed - appealed strongly to the socially liberated sixties generation. He resurfaced as a countercultural icon; his photograph appeared on the cover of the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and his ideas influenced everyone from Dr. Timothy Leary to the rock group Led Zeppelin. He was hailed as a prophet before his time for bringing together eastern and western esoteric traditions, and although he could never quite escape the "Satanist" tag that he had gained in the Edwardian newspapers, this ensured his present-day popularity. — George Pendle

I love him to death, there's an Edwardian finishing touch to everything he does. — Helene Hanff

The show is like an Edwardian play - emotional life gets stepped on for the sake of accepted manners, and that's terrific for actors to play in. — Jason Alexander

My great-grandfather, Sam Aykroyd, was a dentist in Kingston, Ontario, and he was also an Edwardian spiritualist researcher who was very interested in what was going on in the invisible world, the survival of the consciousness, precipitated paintings, mediumship, and trans-channeling. — Dan Aykroyd

Perhaps their papas should buy them some manners instead of squandering their wealth on party dresses. — Margie Bayer

[The Edwardian era] was a time of booming trade, of great prosperity and wealth in which the pageant of London Society took place year after year in a setting of traditional dignity and beauty. The great houses - Devonshire, Dorchester, Grosvenor, Stafford and Lansdowne House - had not yet been converted into museums, hotels and flats, and there we danced through the long summer nights till dawn. The great country-houses still flourished in their glory, and on their lawns in the green shade of trees the art of human intercourse was exquisitely practised by men and women not yet enslaved by household cares and chores who still had time to read, to talk, to listen and to think. — Violet Bonham Carter

Who can stop influenza and tuberculosis? The wealth of high society cannot buy off this evil, for their bored children die alongside everyone else. — Margie Bayer

The Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors offered him a six-figure sum in recognition of his pioneering wartime inventions. Jefferis was gratified but turned it down. 'His Edwardian principals of right and wrong were very strong,' said his son John.16 He did not believe he should profit from having helped to defeat Hitler. — Giles Milton

The collection of sombre and bulky objects that had stood in his father's dressing room; indestructable presents for his wedding and twenty-first birthday, ivory, brass bound, covered in pigskin, crested and gold mounted, suggestive of expensive Edwardian masculinity
racing flasks and hunting flasks, cigar cases, tobacco jars, jockeys, elaborate meerschaum pipes, button hooks and hat brushes. — Evelyn Waugh

An Edwardian lady in full dress was a wonder to behold, and her preparations for viewing were awesome. — William Manchester

Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another agewhen so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order. — Ellen Glasgow

With the possible exception of steampunk aficionados, many reasonable people must view my fascination with Victorian and Edwardian popular fiction - mysteries, fantasy, and adventure - as eccentric or merely antiquarian. — Michael Dirda

I hate this image of me as a prim Edwardian. I want to shock everyone. — Helena Bonham Carter

He stopped, gazing at the girl who stood before it. The man guessed the child to be ten years old. She had dark brown hair to her neck with ends that showed curls, ivory skin and large eyes of sapphire blue. Thin and barefooted, with soot on her face she wore an old, tattered white dress. As the child turned to look at him, the man thought she must be an orphan beggar and he was unable to tear his face away from her eyes. Those bright blue eyes filled with an incomprehensible sadness. What pain did she carry? — Suilyaniz Cintron

Mr. Evans beamed. "Could I get you a drink?" he said. The words were ordinary; the phrase was one that Maureen had heard and often welcomed at endless dozens of parties. But Mr. Evans managed to invest it with such a delightful Edwardian gallantry that you almost thought he had said, "May I bring an ice to you in the conservatory? — Anthony Boucher

I thought that strange syntax was the language of story books. I didn't realize those were poor translations ... English from Edwardian times. — Sandra Cisneros

Marmite - like that other little black-jar job, Bovril - is so much a Mark 1 staple-of-Empire brand, so much part of the Edwardian world of enamel advertising signs, the history of grin-and-bear-it industrial food. — Peter York

It's not the type of work you can put on a business card.
I sometimes play the game with myself, though. What would I put on a business card?
Jill Kismet, Exorcist. Maybe on a nice heavy cream-colored card stock, with a good font. Not pretentious, just something tasteful. Garamond, maybe, or Book Antiqua. In bold. Or one of those old-fashioned fonts, but no frilly Edwardian script.
Of course, there's slogans to be taken into account. Jill Kismet, Dealer in Dark Things. Spiritual Exterminator. Slayer of Hell's Minions. — Lilith Saintcrow

I've always been drawn to the Edwardian period in England. To me, it seems like such a fascinating time, when the British Empire was at the height of its powers and the strict mores of the Victorian age were dissipating into the decadence of King Edward's reign. — Kevin Kwan

Among the masked dandies of Edwardian comedy, Max Beerbohm is the most happily armored by a deep and almost innocent love of himself as a work of art. — V.S. Pritchett

Journalists are always calling my features Edwardian or Victorian, whatever that means. I am small, and people were smaller in those times. I'm pale and sickly-looking. I look fragile-like a doll. But sometimes I just wish I had less of a particular look, one that was more versatile. — Helena Bonham Carter

This was a pretty girl, except she had legs like an Edwardian grand piano ... — Kurt Vonnegut

As the carriage bumped her bones along the dark country lanes, Martha decided that if she ever got back to her own time she would write a book called 'Travel in the Edwardian Era. It would be a short book - OUCH in capital letters followed by fifty pages of bad language. — Stephen Cole

The world of 1906 ... was a stable and a civilized world in which the greatness and authority of Britain and her Empire seemed unassailable and invulnerably secure. In spite of our reverses in the Boer War it was assumed unquestioningly that we should always emerge "victorious, happy and glorious" from any conflict. There were no doubts about the permanence of our "dominion over palm and pine", or of our title to it. Powerful, prosperous, peace-loving, with the seas all round us and the Royal Navy on the seas, the social, economic, international order seemed to our unseeing eyes as firmly fixed on earth as the signs of the Zodiac in the sky. — Violet Bonham Carter

Depression must be avoided, no matter what the cost. Depression is lying on the Edwardian couch for six months, too tired to unlace your shoes. Depression is awakening each morning feeling as if someone near and dear and closely related died the night before. Bad news. Don't tempt depression. — Tim Sandlin

Eve." He placed himself in front of her again. "We can't have any more than today, but we can have today."

"What are you suggesting?" Eve's pulse raced, wildfire in her veins.

Marcus gripped her by the shoulders, his mouth opening ravenously on hers, and then he broke the kiss as suddenly as it had begun. "For today, at least, we could pretend we have each other, and no one else. No demands, no promises to keep. — Sherri Browning

To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening. — Saki

There she sits in the corner of the carriage - that carriage which is travelling, not from Richmond to Waterloo, but from one age of English literature to the next, for Mrs. Brown is eternal, Mrs. Brown is human nature, Mrs. Brown changes only on the surface, it is the novelists who get in and out - there she sits and not one of the Edwardian writers has so much as looked at her. They have looked very power- fully, searchingly, and sympathetically out of the window ; at factories, at Utopias, even at the decoration and upholstery of the carriage ; but never at her, never at life, never at human nature. — Virginia Woolf

Miss Parkinson lived alone in a big bay-windowed house of Edwardian brick with a vast garden of decaying fruit trees and untidy hedges of gigantic size. She was great at making elderberry wine and bottling fruit and preserves and lemon curd and drying flowers for winter. She felt, like Halibut, that things were not as they used to be. The synthetic curse of modern times lay thick on everything. There was everywhere a sad drift from Nature. — H.E. Bates

Tockytock, tockytock
clumped our Alpine, Edwardian cuckoo clock,
slung with strangled, wooden game. — Robert Lowell

She was slender and dressed like an Edwardian maid, complete with a starched white bib apron over a full black skirt and white cotton blouse. Her face didn't fit her outfit, being too long and sharp-boned, with black almond-shaped eyes. Despite her mob cap she wore her hair loose, a black curtain that fell to her waist. She instantly gave me the creeps and not just because I've seen too many Japanese horror films. — Ben Aaronovitch

He began to get the feeling that dear Uncle Carol "was drifting about in an Edwardian summer — Robert Sellers

Katie shook her head in dismay. "I thought being poor was the worst thing that could happen to a girl."
"No, Katie," the countess said in a clear voice. "The worst thing is to be in love with one man and have to marry another."
Katie O'Reilly to the Countess of Marbury in "Titanic Rhapsody — Jina Bacarr

The Masters is more like a vast Edwardian garden party than a golf tournament. — Alistair Cooke

I have a vernacular house on the seaside in Northumberland and an Edwardian semi in south Manchester. They're both exactly as big as they need to be. I can't be doing with an ostentatious, big house - you can only be in one room at a time. — Val McDermid

I settled in with The Uninvited Guests thinking I knew what kind of Edwardian pleasures were in store: the fraught dinner party in an endangered, rambling house, the feuding family, the rich suitor, the disruptive visitors. The novel has all of those delightful things, but it also defied every one of my expectations. I saw none of it coming. I read it in one breathless sitting, and finished wanting to give it to everyone I know. — Maile Meloy

Mark Sykes exemplified another characteristic common among the British ruling class of the Edwardian age, a breezy arrogance that held that most of the world's messy problems were capable of neat solution, that the British had the answers to many of them, and that it was their special burden - no less tiresome for being God-given - to enlighten the rest of humanity to that fact. — Scott Anderson

My first encounter with science fiction was reading the work of H.G. Wells when I was nine or ten, and I don't believe 'The War of the Worlds' or 'The Time Machine' have ever been bettered. Plus, I have always had a liking for Victorian and Edwardian clothes and contraptions, which tends to color the worlds I dream up. — Philip Reeve

Don't ask me why I know what an Edwardian smoking jacket looks like: let's just say it has something to do with Doctor Who and leave it at that. — Ben Aaronovitch

A number of his friends whose wilfully overburdened lives inhibited the enjoyment of all but necessary pleasures somehow found time to take afternoon tea with the Ackroyds in their neat Edwardian villa in Swiss Cottage with its comfortable sitting-room and atmosphere of timeless indulgence. — P.D. James

Fitz sat in a green leather armchair. To Ethel's surprise, Albert Solman was there, too, in a black suit and a stiff-collared shirt. A lawyer by training, Solman was what Edwardian gentlemen called a man of business. He managed Fitz's money, checking his income from coal royalties and rents, paying the bills, and issuing cash for staff wages. He also dealt with leases and other contracts, and occasionally brought lawsuits against people who tried to cheat Fitz. Ethel had met him before and did not like him. She thought he was a know-all. Perhaps all lawyers were; she did not know: he was the only one she had ever met. — Ken Follett

I mean to explore you thoroughly this time."

"Take heed, Captain. I'm prepared to answer all threats measure for measure. — Sherri Browning