But the eighteenth century, on the whole, loathed melancholy.

It is the unbroken testimony of all history that alcoholic liquors have been used by the strongest, wisest, handsomest, and in every way best races of all times.

Between Scott on the earlier side and Dickens and Thackeray on the other, there was an immense production of novels, illustrated by not a few names which should rank high in the second class, while some would promote more than one of them to the first.

The transition state of manners and language cannot be too often insisted upon: for this affected the process at both ends, giving the artist in fictitious life an uncertain model to copy and unstable materials to work in.

Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist.

The Odyssey is, indeed, one of the greatest of all stories, it is the original romance of the West; but the Iliad, though a magnificent poem, is not much of a story.

But at the time when he wrote, Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, wrote only in French or Latin; and when they began to write in English, a man of genius, to interpret and improve on him, was not found for a long time.

The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for its growth.

One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name.

But the eighteenth century, on the whole, loathed melancholy.

But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up and exhausted all the good that fiction could give and do.

To pass to the deluge, and beyond it, and to come to close quarters with our proper division, the origin of Romance itself is a very debatable subject, or rather it is a subject which the wiser mind will hardly care to debate much.

But dinner is dinner a meal at which not so much to eat it becomes difficult to eat much at it as you grow older as to drink to talk to flirt to discuss to rejoice at the closing of the day. I do not think anything serious should be done after it as nothing should before breakfast.

Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that humor excites in those who lack it.

We have the melancholy dilemma of not being in a state to make peace or to prosecute war.

I think every human being has a level of melancholy in life and in general.

In applying this subject to the melancholy event, which has deprived this Diocese of its venerable Bishop, we presume not to compare him with the blessed Apostle, of whom we have been speaking.

We may smile at these matters, but they are melancholy illustrations.

I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.

The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.

The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.

Diabetes is caused by melancholy.

I pray God I may never be brought to the melancholy trial; but, if ever I should, it will then be known how far I can reduce to practice principles which I know to be founded in truth.

Melancholy and sadness are the start of doubt... doubt is the beginning of despair; despair is the cruel beginning of the differing degrees of wickedness.

A strangely reflective, even melancholy day. Is that because, unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere, Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn?

All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we are leaving behind is part of ourselves.

That's one thing about fashion that you really shouldn't be-you can't be melancholy in fashion because people don't respond to it.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another!

A lot of the time there is a lot of melancholy in the lyrics.

Melancholy is no bad thing.

If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - then utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy - and without consciousness.

The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings.

Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half.

In such a diversity it was impossible I should be disposed to melancholy.

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful.

My earlier poems were sadder than my poems are today, perhaps because I wrote them in confusion or when I was unhappy. But I am not a melancholy person, quite the contrary, no one enjoys laughing more than I do.

Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.

Cities produce in me melancholy or a tension I don't need.

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

It's a brooding melancholy that haunts me.

Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.

I know not why there is such a melancholy feeling attached to the remembrance of past happiness, except that we fear that the future can have nothing so bright as the past.

Youth, however, can afford to enjoy even its melancholy; for the ultimate fact of which that melancholy is a prophecy is a long way off.

What some people interpret as brooding melancholy is serenity. I don't feel required to grasp all the time.

There was a darkness, a melancholy, that people had trouble accepting. Maybe now, it would work better.

Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.

The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.

A lot of people say I wouldn't have a down day, but you look at the music and there's real melancholy.