Ouida Quotes

Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye.

There is no more terrible woe upon earth than the woe of the stricken brain, which remembers the days of its strength, the living light of its reason, the sunrise of its proud intelligence, and knows that these have passed away like a tale that is told.

you have not a boat of your own, that is just it; that is what women always suffer from; they have to steer, but the craft is some one else's, and the haul too.

No great talker ever did any great thing yet, in this world.

Men are always optimists when they look inwards, and pessimists when they look round them.

There is nothing that you may not get people to believe in if you will only tell it them loud enough and often enough, till the welkin rings with it.

Charity in various guises is an intruder the poor see often; but courtesy and delicacy are visitants with which they are seldom honored.

The loss of our illusions is the only loss from which we never recover.

Why is youth so short and age so long?

It is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams.

What is failure except feebleness? And what is it to miss one's mark except to aim widely and weakly?

Flowers belong to Fairyland: the flowers and the birds and the butterflies are all that the world has kept of its golden age--the only perfectly beautiful things on earth--joyous, innocent, half divine--useless, say they who are wiser than God.

Opposition to a man in love is like oil to fire.

What we love once, we love forever. Shall there be joy in heaven over those who repent, yet no forgiveness for them upon earth? --"Wanda

It is only to those who have never lived that death ever can seems beautiful.

We only see clearly when we have reached the depths of woe.

Genius cannot escape the taint of its time more than a child the influence of its begetting.

A little scandal is an excellent thing; nobody is ever brighter or happier of tongue than when he is making mischief of his neighbors.

Christianity has ever been the enemy of human love.

The song that we hear with our ears is only the song that is sung in our hearts.

When passion and habit long lie in company it is only slowly and with incredulity that habit awakens to finds its companion fled, itself alone.

Belief of some sort is the lifeblood of Art.

Sport inevitably creates deadness of feeling. No one could take pleasure in it who was sensitive to suffering; and therefore its pursuit by women is much more to be regretted than its pursuit by men, because women pursue much more violently and recklessly what they pursue at all.

In a few generations more, there will probably be no room at all allowed for animals on the earth: no need of them, no toleration of them. An immense agony will have then ceased, but with it there will also have passed away the last smile of the world's youth.

Indifference is the invincible grant of the world.

The art of pleasing is more based on the art of seeming pleased than people think of, and she disarmed the prejudices of her enemies by the unaffected delight she appeared to take in themselves.

Woman's fatal weakness is to desire sympathy and comprehension. --"Wanda

Histories in blazonry and poems in stone.

There is no applause that so flatters a man as that which he wrings from unwilling throats.

Friendship needs to be rooted in respect, but love can live upon itself alone

Friendship is usually treated...as a tough...thing which will survive all manner of bad treatment. But this is an exceedingly great and foolish error; it may die in an hour of a single unwise word.

For Pastrasche was their alpha and omega; their treasury and granary; their store of gold and wand of wealth; their bread-winner and minister; their only friend and comforter. ... Pastrasche was their dog.

I do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind and throw the blame upon a woman.

The heart of silver falls ever into the hands of brass. The sensitive herb is eaten as grass by the swine.

Women hope that the dead love may revive; but men know that of all dead things none are so past recall as a dead passion.

The world never leaves one in ignorance or in peace.

I have met a thousand scamps; but I never met one who considered himself so. Self-knowledge isn't so common.

Charity is a flower not naturally of earthly growth, and it needs manuring with a promise of profit.

Woman already controls by not seeming to do so. Talk no more of her rights.

Hypocrites weep, and you cannot tell their tears from those of saints; but no bad man ever laughed sweetly yet.

Christianity has been cruel in much to the human race. It has quenched much of the sweet joy and gladness of life; it has caused the natural passions and affections of it to be held as sins.

Excess always carries it's own retributions.

Honor is an old-world thing; but it smells sweet to those in whose hand it is strong.

There is no knife that cuts so sharply and with such poisoned blade as treachery.

There is a chord in every heart that has a sigh in it if touched aright.

Fame has only the span of the day, they say. But to live in the hearts of people-that is worth something.

In its permission to man to render subject to him all other living creatures of the earth, it continued the cruelty of the barbarian and the pagan, and endowed these with what appeared a divine authority.

Who has passed by the fates of disillusion has died twice.