A Quote by Jane Jacobs

The Victorian house and lots of other buildings weren't oppressive in themselves. They were often very airy and gingerbready and fancy. But they were associated with all this [Victorian] stuffiness.

Jane Jacobs

Quote Topics

Airy Associated Buildings Fancy House Lots Often Oppressive Other Themselves Very Victorian Were

Quote Author

Jane Jacobs
American - Sociologist
May 1, 1916 - April 25, 2006

The house I grew up in was a tall Victorian town house in Bristol. There were very big rooms, which were under-furnished and always cold.

Philippa Gregory

Modernism really started with people getting infatuated with the idea of "it's the twentieth century, is this suitable for the twentieth century." This happened before the First World War and it wasn't just the soldiers. You can see it happening if you read the Bloomsbury biographies. It was a reaction to a great extent against Victorianism. There was so much that was repressive and stuffy. Victorian buildings were associated with it, and they were regarded as very ugly. Even when they weren't ugly, people made them ugly. They were painted hideously.

Jane Jacobs

Period films to me are very often alienating to the audience. There's very often a formality. A staunchy quality to them that comes from the misenscene. It also comes from the performances of the actors, because they're acting Victorian which really means that they're just acting the way they've seen previous actors act Victorian.

Christopher Nolan

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.

Margaret Thatcher

The readership of Victorian novels, when they were published, was much less diverse. People were probably white, and had enough money to be literate. Very often, there are phrases in Italian, German and French that are left untranslated.

Eleanor Catton

I'm completely uninterested in the origins of Stonehenge. I don't care about the real story behind it or whether it should be saved or not. What I'm interested in is this: in the Victorian era, you could go there as an early cultural tourist and you were given a chisel to chip off a bit of the stones and take it with you. That's what you did in Victorian times.

Aleksandra Mir

Victorian values meant brutalizing people who were often poor.

Charles Palliser

I used to be very fascinated by Victorian stuff, and my best-known books, the 'Mortal Engines' series, have a sort of retro, Victorian vibe, despite being set in the far future.

Philip Reeve

I used to be very fascinated by Victorian stuff, and my best known books, the Mortal Engines series, have a sort of retro, Victorian vibe, despite being set in the far future.

Philip Reeve

You've probably heard about the theory of steam-engine time - that even after the steam engine had been invented, it had to wait until people were ready to make use of it. The same thing happens in literary circles. The truth is, I'm not terribly interested in Victorian times; I'm interested in Victorian writers. I'm interested in most eras of history, but not the Victorian Era especially. I was interested in the John Franklin Expedition. I was interested in these last five weird years of Dickens' life. And I just have to take the age that comes with all that when I write about it.

Dan Simmons

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.

Charles Kennedy

Martha Stewart has two houses in East Hampton. She has an old fashioned Victorian house and a very new modern house.

Steven Gaines

I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly believe this.

Margaret Atwood

Halloween isn't the only time for ghosts and ghost stories. In Victorian Britain, spooky winter's tales were part of the Christmas season, often told after dinner, over port or coffee.