Ouida Quotes
Scandals are like dandelion seeds--they are arrow-headed, and stick where they fall, and bring forth and multiply fourfold.
Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.
Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye.
Music is not a science any more than poetry is. It is a sublime instinct, like genius of all kinds.
I do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind and throw the blame upon a woman.
Humiliation is a guest that only comes to those who have made ready his resting-place, and will give him a fair welcome. ... no one can disgrace you save yourself.
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?
To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.
Truth is a rough, honest, helter-skelter terrier that none like to see brought into their drawing rooms.
A little scandal is an excellent thing; nobody is ever brighter or happier of tongue than when he is making mischief of his neighbors.
It is a kind of blindness--poverty. We can only grope through life when we are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against every angle.
The fire of true enthusiasm is like the fires of Baku, which no water can ever quench, and which burn steadily on from night to day, and year to year, because their well-spring is eternal.
The heart of silver falls ever into the hands of brass. The sensitive herb is eaten as grass by the swine.
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.
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.
Charity in various guises is an intruder the poor see often; but courtesy and delicacy are visitants with which they are seldom honored.
Hypocrites weep, and you cannot tell their tears from those of saints; but no bad man ever laughed sweetly yet.
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.
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.
When you talk yourself, you think how witty, how original, how acute you are; but when another does so, you are very apt to think only - What a crib from Rochefoucauld!