Charlotte Turner Smith Quotes

I was told, and indeed I saw several examples, that neither time nor place was much minded, and that I might hazard being equally careless of chronology and geography; but I piqued myself on having studied Aristotle, and scrupulously attended to the probabilities of time and place.

Turn your thoughts to novel writing—narrative, let it be about what it will, is read, because the mind quietly acquiesces, and it requires no trouble to think about it. On your part it will demand much less care in the composition. Never mind improbabilities—put together a sufficient number of facts—the more unlikely the better. If you are too idle to choose the trouble of inventing, collect eight or nine of the most popular works of that sort; take a piece of one, and a piece of another, and put them together, only a little altered, just to disguise them: never mind whether what the painters call keeping, can in this motley assemblage be attended to; nobody thinks about that: sprinkle the whole plentifully with horrors of some sort or other, to stimulate the languid attention, and you will have a certainty of a sale at least among the circulating libraries, which, after all, is the principal sale that can be expected; for who buy novels?—Who indeed buy books at all in these times?

It has been said that Shakespeare, the great delineator of human character, has failed in distinguishing his principal women—and that such as he meant to be amiable are all equally gentle and good. How difficult then it is for a novelist to give to one of his heroines any very marked feature which shall not disfigure her! Too much reason and self-command destroy the interest we take in her distresses. It has been observed, that Clarissa is so equal to every trial as to diminish our pity. Other virtues than gentleness, pity, filial obedience, or faithful attachment, hardly belong to the sex.

For having been educated in a convent, she knew nothing of the customs or manners of the world; and found it difficult to understand that among a people piquing themselves on their liberty, it was the custom to shut a man up in perpetual confinement, to enable him to pay his debts.

I might, indeed, read history; but whenever I attempt to do so, I am to tell you the truth, driven from it by disgust—What is it, but a miserably mortifying detail of crimes and follies?—of the guilt of a few, and the sufferings of many, while almost every page offers an argument in favor of what I never will believe—that heaven created the human race only to destroy itself.

If truth is not to be spoken, Sir, in a government, calling itself free, least it should be understood by the people, who are governed; and prevent their freely supplying the oil, that facilitates the movement of the cumbrous machine—If facts, which cannot be denied, be repressed; and reason, which cannot be controverted, be stifled; the time is not far distant, when such a country may say, adieu liberty!

Novel-writing has in one respect an affinity to the drama—that time and distance are required to soften for use the harsher features that may be exhibited from real life; that it was almost impossible to bring forward events without touching on their causes; and that any tendency to political discussion, however liberal or applicable, was not to be tolerated in a sort of work which people took up with no other design than to be amused at the least possible expence of thought.

They say I am a reformer. They say wrong: for I have long since given up any such chimerical idea, as that of being able to make men happier who are wicked and miserable by prescription. Withdrawing, therefore, from any such Utopian and hopeless attempt, I believed the best thing I could do was, to relieve, where I could, individual distress, and to lighten the chains that villany often imposes on simplicity under the name of law. In this I have done some good, and what else ought a man to do on this earth?