Victorian Values Quotes

Still often interventionist, convinced of our importance in the world, even those of us born long after 1900 live in a country that is much more Victorian than we think.

A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and Champagne, the only true feminine and becoming viands.

Some ministers are fond of talking about a return to Victorian values. We must realise that those Victorian values are being expressed by some of the younger people in this society in shameful and disturbing disregard for other members of their generation who are not as fortunate as they are in having a job.

The Englishman can get along with sex quite perfectly so long as he can pretend that it isn't sex but something else.

The reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.

My father wasn't a cruel man. And I loved him. But he was a pretty tough character. His own father was even tougher - one of those Victorians, hard as iron - but my dad was tough enough.

Whatever the Victorians did right in England, we need to resuscitate over here. In the late 19th century, the entire English population were propagandised into buying into a certain code of morals. I would be happy if we could emulate that in some way in America.

I was brought up by a Victorian Grandmother. We were taught to work jolly hard. We were taught to prove yourself; we were taught self reliance; we were taught to live within our income. You were taught that cleanliness is next to Godliness. You were taught self respect. You were taught always to give a hand to your neighbour. You were taught tremendous pride in your country. All of these things are Victorian values. They are also perennial values. You don't hear so much about these things these days, but they were good values and they led to tremendous improvements in the standard of living.

My brothers and sister and I were brought up in an atmosphere which I would describe as 'Puritan decadence'. Puritanism names the behaviour which is condemned; Puritan decadence regards the name itself as indecent, and pretends that the object behind that name does not exist until it is named.

Tennyson seems to be the patron saint of the wishy washies, which is perhaps why I admire him so much, not only as a poet, but as a man.

The one thing the Victorians really believed in was philanthropy. I think we've forgotten the obligation to be philanthropic. I think we need smaller government, but I want to make it clear I'm not the Sarah Palin of the Cotswolds.

When I came to London in 1986, I was amazed at how prudish everyone was.

Victorian society was homogeneous without being homogenized. It was, to paraphrase the epigram about Parliament, a society of extreme eccentrics who agreed so well that they could afford to differ.

If I could create an ideal world, it would be an England with the fire of the Elizabethans, the correct taste of the Georgians, and the refinement and pure ideals of the Victorians.

I was asked whether I was trying to restore Victorian values. I said straight out I was. And I am.

It's hard being gay in Edwardian times.

I was raised by maternal grandparents who were born in 1890 and 1899, respectively. They were British subjects; George V was the cousin of the tsar. The Romanovs were very real in their household.

As a schoolboy, I loved Charles Dickens. His 'David Copperfield' has had the strongest influence on me - I looked up to David Copperfield as a role model.

I was brought up very conservatively. My father was positively Victorian - I wasn't even allowed to wear my hair down.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

The Victorians have been immoderately praised, and immoderately blamed, and surely it is time we formed some reasonable picture of them? There was their courageous, intellectually adventurous side, their greedy and inhuman side, their superbly poetic side, their morally pretentious side, their tea and buttered toast side, and their champagne and Skittles side. Much like ourselves, in fact, though rather dirtier.

It was the Victorians who covered the piano legs and drew a heavy curtain over what a lady got up to in her boudoir.

Jane Austen we know never let two men converse alone in any novel because what they said would be unknown to her.