Quotes from book
Uncle Silas

J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Uncle Silas, subtitled "A Tale of Bartram-Haugh", is a Victorian Gothic mystery-thriller novel by the Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Despite Le Fanu resisting its classification as such, the novel has also been hailed as a work of sensation fiction by contemporary reviewers and modern critics alike. It is an early example of the locked-room mystery subgenre, rather than a novel of the supernatural , but does show a strong interest in the occult and in the ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish scientist, philosopher and Christian mystic.

J. Sheridan Le Fanu photo

“How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long – the care of cares – the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven – and straight you find a new stratum there.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Uncle Silas

Source: Uncle Silas (1864), Ch. 53

J. Sheridan Le Fanu photo

“There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Uncle Silas

Conclusion
Uncle Silas (1864)

J. Sheridan Le Fanu photo

“The world," he resumed after a short pause, "has no faith in any man's conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Uncle Silas

Source: Uncle Silas (1864), Ch. 47

J. Sheridan Le Fanu photo

“There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Uncle Silas

Source: Uncle Silas (1864), Ch. 21

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