Mary Elizabeth Braddon

“She was beautiful; but her beauty was of that order which is doomed to grievous deterioration and decay.”

“It is so easy to be wrong-and to persist in being wrong-when one is surrounded by people who have never heard of weights and measures.”

“She was a fairy-tale princess who had been plunged into the crudest of realities.”

“Let the dead Past bury its dead!”

“To the wicked, the words of the wicked are the words of wisdom.”

“No sin is so light that it may be trifled with.”

“In a world so full of real evils, it is a great blessing to be able to forget them for a time.”

“Whatever is, is best.”

“It is the people who have no secrets that are the most difficult to understand.”

“A dangerous and designing woman is a reptile, to be crushed under the heel.”

“The premonitory instinct of the watchdog, which scents the burglar while he is yet afar off.”

“An amiable handsome man-a man who is not a dandy, a man who is not a flirt-is a man who is a jewel.”

“The power of a man's love is a woman's greatest treasure.”

“There is no home so lonely, no city so desolate, as that which is empty of the faces we love.”

“The slowly flowing poison of jealousy had been distilled into the cup of her life.”

“The secret of my life has been my capacity for work.”

“The commonest weakness of our race is our anxiety to be in advance of our time.”