J. Sheridan Le Fanu Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“...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.”

“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.”

“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.”