Quotes from Ouida

Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.

There's a deal of goodness that the world never sees," said Tussler in conclusion, "as there's a deal of viciousness it never guesses.

There are wrongs for which religion makes no provision, and of which it has no comprehension. --"Wanda

Experience is an excellent spyglass; but it has this drawback, that Prejudice very often clouds the lens.

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

He crept up, and touched the face of the boy. "Didst thou dream that I should be faithless and forsake thee? I— a dog?" said that mute caress.

Men object to the surveillance of a wife, and most justly; but they seem to forget that it is nothing compared to the unscrupulous espionage of a courtesan.

Even the sheep think, I do believe, though they look so stupid. Everything in creation thinks, that's my idea. Look at a little beetle, how clever it is, how cunning in defense, how patient in labor, how full of disquiet;—but you cannot understand, you are only a nursling.

As a postscript, it is interesting to note that on a visit to London in 1886, Ouida did meet Oscar Wilde and indeed published four articles in his magazine Woman's World between 1888 and 1889; her experience of knowing Wilde, who described her as "the last romantic", did influence her later works, however superficially.

So we, in thoughtless play, twist the first gleaming and silky threads of the fatal cord which will cling about our necks, fastened beyond hope of release, as long as our lives shall last!

close to the objects of her attachment, the little lovely yellow chickens, surely the prettiest of all new-born things; humiliatingly pretty beside the rough ugliness of new-born man, who piques himself on being lord of all created creatures; God knows why, except that he is slowest in development, and quickest in evil!

An hour drifted by. The church clock on the cliffs had struck four times; a deep-toned, weary bell, that tolled for every quarter, and must often have been heard, at dead of night, by dying men, drowning unshriven and unhouseled.

After a little time they all began to smoke, the Pearl included, though she threw away much more of her cigar than she consumed

Trust was right, as, looking back on that time, I know now, in thinking that Ben had some touch in him of the poet. Not of the poet's utterance, surely; I do not think he could have strung a line of words together to save his existence; but of the poet's temperament, of the poet's feeling.

And I knew that she said truly; for indeed to live only to know the pains, the needs, the agonies, and the travails that lie in living, is a hard fate, though it be the fate of millions.

Than to suppose that they like what is human and real, he means," said Beltran. "They don't care the least about that; they like a little broad farce, a little rough murder, and a little rosewater sentiment: anything more bothers them. They can't understand it.

What? A character almost as awful as Phaedre, and quite as desolate as Antigone, represented by a graceful coquette in point lace and pearls, who will take poison as sweetly as if it were a cup of coffee, and will die with elaborate care not to tumble her train? Preposterous!

Pearl's temper absolutely unbearable, and caused her to break her ivory hair-brush upon her maid's shoulders.

Whatever good I have kept in me—and in the world it is very hard to keep any—I owe it to Ben on those still Sunday mornings in those deep, old, quiet, green woods.

Then he went straightway to the presence-chamber; and he spoke in the speech of men; and he told his lord of that frail wife's dishonor, and said, 'Arise I cast her off, and be strong as thou ever hast been.' But the king, mad with rage, would not hearken; he leaped down from his ivory throne, and drew bis dagger out from his girdle, and thrust it into the heart of Ilderiui. 'So serve I the foes of my angel!' he cried; and Ilderim fell at his feet. 'I forgive,' he said simply,—and died.

This was thoroughly irrational in me, of course. The happiness of our very early years is quite unconscious, and derives its peace from that very unconsciousness. If a child, or a puppy, knew he were happy, he would be analytical; and with the first moment of self-analysis the first shadow of discomfort would fall.

The old man was silent: the truth suggested itself to him with the boy's innocent answer. He was tied to a bed of dried leaves in the corner of a wattle hut, but he had not wholly forgotten what the ways of the world were like.

My little brain was teeming with a myriad of visions—dogs have very vivid fancies, as you may tell by the excitement of our dreams.

I remembered Ben's words when I also entered that abomination of desolation—the eastern half of the city of labor. In the little cottage in the pine wood, even in the dreariness of winter and under the drag of poverty, there had been beauty—beauty in the white, smooth, glittering enow;