J. Sheridan Le Fanu Quotes

You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Nevertheless, life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

You are afraid to die?'Yes, everyone is.'But to die as lovers may - to die together, so that they may live together. Girls are caterpillars when they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structures.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Places change imperceptibly – in detail, at least – a good deal,' said the Doctor, making an effort to keep up a conversation that plainly would not go on itself; 'and people too; population shifts – there's an old fellow, sir, they call Death.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

There is a faculty in man that will acknowledge the unseen. He may scout and scare religion from him; but if he does, superstition perches near.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

I have often wondered since at my own firmness. In that dreadful interview with my uncle I had felt, in the whirl and horror of my mind, on the very point of submitting, just as nervous people are said to throw themselves over precipices through sheer dread of falling.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

I had first thought of Milly's absurdities, to which, in description, I cannot do justice, simply because so many details have, by distance of time, escaped my recollection. But her ways and her talk were so indescribably grotesque that she made me again and again quiver with suppressed laughter. But there was a pitiable and even a melancholy meaning underlying the burlesque. This creature, with no more education than a dairy-maid, I gradually discovered had fine natural aptitudes for accomplishment - a very sweet voice, and wonderfully delicate ear, and a talent for drawing which quite threw mine into the shade. It was really astonishing.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exists and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

You will do well to take advantage of Madame's short residence to get up your French a little... You will be glad of this, my dear, when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

In my time first cousins did not meet like strangers. But we are learning modesty from the Americans, and old English ways are too gross for us.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Have not women preferred hatred to indifference, and the reputation of witchcraft, with all its penalties, to absolute insignificance?

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

I am afraid we women are factionists; we always take a side, and nature has formed us for advocates rather than judges.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

(...) and I tell you, Austin Ruthyn, if you won't look about and marry somebody, somebody may possibly marry you.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long—the care of cares—the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven—and straight you find a new stratum there. As physical science tells us no fluid is without its skin, so does it seem with this fine medium of the soul, and these successive films of care that form upon its surface on mere contact with the upper air and light.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

If your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Although I felt very weak, I did not feel ill; and strength, one always fancies, is a thing that may be picked up when we please.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

I remember everything about it—with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Jusging by the sour glance she threw on me as she said this, I concluded that I represented those 'late changes' to which all the sorrows of the house were referred. I felt unhappy under the ill-will even of this odious old woman, being one of those unhappily constructed mortals who cannot be indifferent when they reasonably ought, and always yearn after kindness, even that of the worthless.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

No one likes a straight road but the man who pays for it, or who, when he travels, is brute enough to wish to get to his journey's end.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

But to die as lovers may - to die together, so that they may live together.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Mademoiselle De Lafontaine – in right of her father, who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical and something of a mystic – now declared that when the moon shone with a light so intense it was well known that it indicated a special spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people; it had marvelous physical influences connected with life. Mademoiselle related that here cousin, who was mate of a merchant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side; and his countenance had never quite recovered its equilibrium.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The precautions of nervous people re infectious, and persons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

But curiosity is a restless and unscrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that hers should be baffled by another.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

...and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to mind with ambiguous alterations--sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, “Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.”And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

What was the power that induced strong soldiers to put off their jackets and shirts, and present their hands to be tied up, and tortured for hours, it might be, under the scourge, with an air of ready volition? The moral coercion of despair; the result of an unconscious calculation of chances that satisfies them that it is ultimately better to do all that, bad as it is, than try the alternative. These unconscious calculations are going on every day with each of us, and the results embody themselves in our lives; and no one knows that there has been a process and a balance struck, and that what they see, and very likely blame, is by the fiat of an invisible but quite irresistible power.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

but curiosity is a restless and scrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that hers should be baffled by another.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu