Quotes from Ouida

Petty laws breed great crimes.

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

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

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

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

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

I have known men who have been sold and bought a hundred times, who have only got very fat and very comfortable in the process of exchange.

When one has not father, or mother, or brother, and all one's friends have barely bread enough for themselves, life cannot be very easy, nor its crusts very many at any time.

Great men have always had dogs.

A pipe is a pocket philosopher,--a truer one than Socrates, for it never asks questions. Socrates must have been very tiresome, when one thinks of it.

for what is the gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which others cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear?

One must pray first, but afterwards one must help oneself. God does not care for cowards.

One must pray first, but afterwards one must help oneself. God does not care for cowards.--"Wanda

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

It is quite easy for stupid people to be happy; they believe in fables, and they trot on in a beaten track like a horse on a tramway.

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

Imagination without culture is crippled and moves slowly; but it can be pure imagination, and rich also, as folk-lore will tell the vainest.

Power is sweet, and when you are a little clerk you love its sweetness quite as much as if you were an emperor, and maybe you love it a good deal more.

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

Music is not a science any more than poetry is. It is a sublime instinct, like genius of all kinds.

An easy-going husband is the one indispensable comfort of life.

It is a kind of blindness--poverty. We can only grope through life when we are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against every angle.

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.

Coleridge cried; "O God, how glorious it is to live!" Renan asks, "O God, when will it be worth while to live?" In Nature we echo the poet; in the world we echo the thinker.