Ouida

“An easy-going husband is the one indispensable comfort of life.”

“One must pray first, but afterwards one must help oneself. God does not care for cowards.--"Wanda”

“Petty laws breed great crimes.”

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

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“Woman's fatal weakness is to desire sympathy and comprehension.--"Wanda”

“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.”

“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”

“The world never leaves one in ignorance or in peace.”

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

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

“Men are always optimists when they look inwards, and pessimists when they look around them.”