Ouida Quotes

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

Petty laws breed great crimes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?