Ouida Quotes

Most crimes are sanctioned in some form or other when they take grand names. — Ouida

Count art by gold, and it fetters the feet it once winged. — Ouida

You know the Ark of Israel and the calf of Belial were both made of gold. Religion has never yet changed the metal of her one adoration. — Ouida

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 — Ouida

Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness. — Ouida

Scandals are like dandelion seeds
they are arrow-headed, and stick where they fall, and bring forth and multiply fourfold. — Ouida

It is hard work to be good when you are very little and very hungry, and have many sticks to beat you, and no mother's lips to kiss you. — Ouida

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

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

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

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. — Ouida

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. — Ouida

Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others. — Ouida

Dissimulation is the only thing that makes society possible; without its amenities the world would be a bear-garden. — Ouida

Fame nowadays is little else but notoriety ... — Ouida

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. — Ouida

Fame! it is the flower of a day, that dies when the next sun rises. — Ouida

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

A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run. — Ouida

Truth is a rough, honest, helter-skelter terrier that none like to see brought into their drawing rooms. — Ouida

The world never leaves one in ignorance or in peace. — Ouida

Age is nothing but death that is conscious. — Ouida

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

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

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. — Ouida

Christianity is a formula: it is nothing more. — Ouida

Christianity has made of death a terror which was unknown to the gay calmness of the Pagan. — Ouida

Indifference is the invincible grant of the world. — Ouida

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

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

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

He mistook, as the cleverest men often do mistake, in underrating the cruelty of women. — Ouida

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

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? — Ouida

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

I only care for the subjective life; I am very German, you see: The woods interest me, and the world does not. — Ouida

Youth without faith is a day without sun. — Ouida

Love is cruel as the grave. — Ouida

Petty laws breed great crimes. — Ouida

Fancy tortures more people than does reality — Ouida

Indifference is the invisible giant of the world. — Ouida

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

Excess always carries its own retribution. — Ouida

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

The joy of a strong nature is as cloudless as its suffering is desolate. — Ouida

Emulation is active virtue; envy is brooding malice. — Ouida

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

It needs a great nature to bear the weight of a great gratitude. — Ouida

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

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

To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery. — Ouida

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

Belief of some sort is the lifeblood of Art. — Ouida

Great men always have dogs. — Ouida

Dishonor is like the Aaron's Beard in the hedgerows; it can only poison if it be plucked. — Ouida

The radical defect in Christianity is that it tried to win the world by a bribe, and it has become a nullity. — Ouida

The scorn of genius is the most arrogant and the most boundless of all scorn. — Ouida

Great men have always had dogs. — Ouida

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

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

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

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

Brussels is a gay little city that lies as bright within its girdle of woodland as any butterfly that rests upon moss. — Ouida

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

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

Woman's fatal weakness is to desire sympathy and comprehension.
Wanda — Ouida

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

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

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

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

A great love is an absolute isolation and an absolute absorption. — Ouida

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. — Ouida

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

Death! It is rest to the aged, it is oblivion to the atheist, it is immortality to the poet! — Ouida

Histories in blazonry and poems in stone. — Ouida

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