Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor

“...because I rant not, neither rave of what I feel, can you be so shallow as to dream that I feel nothing? ””

— R. D. Blackmore

“May be we are not such fools as we look. But though we be, we are well content, so long as we may be two fools together.””

— R. D. Blackmore

“It seemed to me that if the lawyers failed to do their duty, they ought to pay people for waiting upon them, instead of making them pay for it.””

— R. D. Blackmore

“I cannot go through all my thoughts, so as to make them clear to you, nor have I ever dwelt on things, to shape a story of them. I know not where the beginning was, nor where the middle ought to be, nor even how at the present time I feel, or think, or ought to think. If I look for help to those around me, who should tell me right and wrong (being older and much wiser), I meet sometimes with laughter, and at other times with anger......I think; and nothing ever comes of it. Nothing, I mean, which I can grasp, and have with any surety; nothing but faint images, and wonderment, and wandering......Often too I wonder at the odds of fortune, which made me (helpless as I am, and fond of peace, and reading), the heiress of this mad domain......You must be tired of this story, and the time I take to think, and the weariness of my telling; but my life from day to day shows so little variance. Among the riders there is none whose safe return I watch for- I mean none more than any other- and indeed there seems no risk...””

— R. D. Blackmore

“But whatever lives or dies, business must be attended to; and the principal business of good Christians is, beyond all controversy, to fight with one another.””

— R. D. Blackmore

“Now let us bandy words no more... nothing is easier than sharp words, except to wish them unspoken.””

— R. D. Blackmore

“The love of all things was upon me, and a softness to them all, and a sense of having something even such as they had.””

— R. D. Blackmore

“But during those two months of fog . . . the saddest and the heaviest thing was to stand beside the sea. To be upon the beach yourself, and see the long waves coming in; to know that they are long waves, but only see a piece of them. And to hear them lifting roundly, swelling over smooth green rocks, plashing down in the hollow corners, but bearing on all the same as ever, soft and sleek and sorrowful, till their little noise is over.””

— R. D. Blackmore

“for boys of twelve are not yet prone to note the shapes of women;””

— R. D. Blackmore