Ouida Quotes

Fame has only the span of the day they say. But to live in the hearts of people-that is worth something.
Ouida
The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.
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
Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.
Ouida
An easygoing husband is the one indispensable comfort of life.
Ouida
What is it that love does to a woman? Without it she only sleeps with it alone she lives.
Ouida
Truth is a rough honest helter-skelter terrier that none like to see brought into their drawing rooms.
Ouida
A cruel story runs on wheels and every hand oils the wheels as they run.
Ouida
The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.
Ouida
To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.
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
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
In the violent scorn of her revolted pride, of her indignant honor, had she forgotten a lowlier yet harder duty left undone?In her contempt and dread of yielding to mere amorous weakness had she stifled and denied the cry of pity, the cry of conscience?To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite. To forgive wrongs darker than death or night. To defy power which seems omnipotent. To love and live to hope till hope creates from it's own wreck the thing it contemplates. Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent.This had been the higher, diviner way which she had missed, this obligation from the passion of the past which she had left unfulfilled, unaccepted.Now the misgiving arose in her whether she had mistaken arrogance for duty; whether, cleaving so closely to honor she had forgotten the obligation of mercy.
Ouida
She was like a queen who beholds the virgin soil of her kingdom invaded and wasted by a traitor.Any other thing she would have pardoned: infidelity, indifference, cruelty, any sins of manhood's caprice or passion, but who should pardon this? The sin was not alone against herself; it was against every law of decency and truth that ever she had been taught to hold sacred; it was against all those great dead, who lay with the cross on their breasts and their swords by their side, from whom she had received and treasured the traditions of honor and purity of race.It was those dead knights whom he had smote upon the mouth and mocked, crying to them: 'Lo! your place is mine; my sons will reign in your stead. I have tainted your race forever; for every my blood flows with yours!'The greatness of a race is a thing far higher than mere pride. Its instincts are noble and supreme. Its obligations are no less than its privileges; it is a great light which streams backward through the darkness of the ages, and if by that light you guide not your footsteps, then are you thrice accursed, holding as you do that lamp of honor in your hands.So she had always thought, and now he had dashed the lamp in the dust.--"Wanda
Ouida
Men are always optimists when they look inwards, and pessimists when they look around them.
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
The world never leaves one in ignorance or in peace.
Ouida
I only care for the subjective life; I am very German, you see: The woods interest me, and the world does not.
Ouida
Is there a more pitiable spectacle than that of a wife contending with others for that charm in her husband's sight which no philters and no prayers can renew when once it has fled forever?Women are so unwise. Love is like a bird's song beautiful and eloquent when heard in forest freedom, harsh and worthless in repetition when sung from behind prison bars.You cannot secure love by vigilance, by environment, by captivity. What use is it to keep the person of a man beside you if his soul be truant from you?
Ouida
He mistook, as the cleverest men often do mistake, in underrating the cruelty of women.
Ouida
I do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind and throw the blame upon a woman.
Ouida
Woman's fatal weakness is to desire sympathy and comprehension.--"Wanda
Ouida
There are wrongs for which religion makes no provision, and of which it has no comprehension.--"Wanda
Ouida
Death had been more pitiful to them than longer life would have been. It had taken the one in the loyalty of love, and the other in the innocence of faith, from a world which for love has no recompense and for faith no fulfillment.
Ouida
One must pray first, but afterwards one must help oneself. God does not care for cowards.--"Wanda
Ouida