Charles Brockden Brown Quotes (18 quotes)

Charles Brockden Brown: 18 quotes0 likes

Famous Charles Brockden Brown Quotes

“I sought not in her visage, for the tinge of the morning, and the lustre of heaven. These had vanished with life; but I hoped for liberty to print a last kiss upon her lips. This was denied me; for such had been the merciless blow that destroyed her, that not a lineament remained!”

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

“Bloodshed is the trade, and horror is the element of this man.”

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

“He describes him in general terms, as the most incomprehensible and formidable among men; as engaged in schemes, reasonably suspected to be, in the highest degree, criminal, but such as no human intelligence is able to unravel: that his ends are pursued by means which leave it in doubt whether he be not in league with some infernal spirit: that his crimes have hitherto been perpetrated with the aid of some unknown but desperate accomplices: that he wages a perpetual war against the happiness of mankind, and sets his engines of destruction at work against every object that presents itself.”

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

“Dost thou wish me to complete the catalogue by thy death? Thy life is a worthless thing. Tempt me no more. I am but a man, and thy presence may awaken a fury which may spurn my control. Begone!”

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

“Fallen from his lofty and heroic station; now finally restored to the perception of truth; weighed to earth by the recollection of his own deeds; consoled no longer by a consciousness of rectitude, for the loss of offspring and wife – a loss for which he was indebted to his own misguided hand; Wieland was transformed at once into the man of sorrow?”

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

“Purposes fraught with horror, that shun the light, and contemplate the pollution of innocence are here engendered, and fostered, and reared to maturity.”

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

Charles Brockden Brown Quotes

“In the midst of my despair, I do not disdain to contribute what little I can for the benefit of mankind.”

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)
Context: I feel little reluctance in complying with your request. You know not fully the cause of my sorrows. You are a stranger to the depth of my distresses. Hence your efforts at consolation must necessarily fail. Yet the tale that I am going to tell is not intended as a claim upon your sympathy. In the midst of my despair, I do not disdain to contribute what little I can for the benefit of mankind. I acknowledge your right to be informed of the events that have lately happened in my family. Make what use of the tale you shall think proper. If it be communicated to the world, it will inculcate the dusty of avoiding deceit. It will exemplify the force of early impressions, and show the immeasurable evils that flow from an erroneous or imperfect discipline.

“I used to suppose that certain evils could never befall a being in possession of a sound mind”

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)
Context: I used to suppose that certain evils could never befall a being in possession of a sound mind; that true virtue supplies us with energy which vice can never resist; that it was always in our power to obstruct, by his own death, the designs of an enemy who aimed at less than our lives.

“I feel little reluctance in complying with your request. You know not fully the cause of my sorrows. You are a stranger to the depth of my distresses. Hence your efforts at consolation must necessarily fail.”

Charles Brockden Brown

“Where is the proof, said I, that daemons may not be subjected to the control of men? This truth may be distorted and debased in the minds of the ignorant. The dogmas of the vulgar, with regard to this subject, are glaringly absurd; but though these may justly be neglected by the wise, we are scarcely justified in totally rejecting the possibility that man may obtain supernatural aid.”

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

“A woman capable of recollection in danger, of warding off groundless panics, of discerning the true mode of proceeding, and profiting by her best resources, is a prodigy.”

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

“My narrative may be invaded by inaccuracy and confusion; but if I live no longer, I will, at least, live to complete it. What but ambiguities, abruptnesses, and dark transitions, can be expected from the historian who is, at the same time, the sufferer of these disasters?”

Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

“Grief carries its own antidote along with it.”