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Ouida Quotes (1839-1908)
Novelist
About Ouida
Ouida (January 7, 1839 β January 25, 1908) was the pen name of the English novelist Maria Louise RamΓ© (although she preferred to be known as Marie Louise de la RamΓ©e).
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βWhat use was it to argue with a little idiot like this? Indeed, peasants never do argue; they use abuse.β
βEven of death Christianity has made a terror which was unknown to the gay calmness of the Pagan and the stoical repose of the Indian.β
βWhen one has not father, or mother, or brother, and all one's friends have barely bread enough for themselves, life cannot be very easy, nor its crusts very many at any time.β
βIt is the trifles of life that are its bores, after all. Most men can meet ruin calmly, for instance, or laugh when they lie in a ditch with their own knee-joint and their hunter's spine broken over the double post and rails: it is the mud that has choked up your horn just when you wanted to rally the pack; it's the whip who carries you off to a division just when you've sat down to your turbot; it's the ten seconds by which you miss the train; it's the dust that gets in your eyes as you go down to Epsom; it's the pretty little rose note that went by accident to your house instead of your club, and raised a storm from madame; it's the dog that always will run wild into the birds; it's the cook who always will season the white soup wrongβit is these that are the bores of life, and that try the temper of your philosophy.β
Ouida Quotes by Topic
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Ouida on Familiarity
β"Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness."β
Ouida on Socialism
βSocialism, which has the future of the world in its hands, will probably be unable to abolish war, and will certaintly not care for beauty or seek to preserve it. The reconstruction of society which Socialism contemplates will not be a state of things in which the interests of either nature or art will be cherished.β
Ouida on Knowledge
βThe scientists take for granted that the education of the schools creates intelligence; very often it does no such thing. It creates a superficial appearance of knowledge indeed; but knowledge is like food, unless it be thoroughly assimilated when absorbed, and thoroughly digested, it can give no nourishment; it lies useless, a heavy and unleavened mass.β
Ouida on Architecture
βFollow the architectural history of any city, and you will find it during the last half-century the sorrowful record of a pitiful destruction. The great gardens are always the first thing sacrificed. They are swept away, and their places covered by brick and mortar with an incredible indifference. Fine houses, even when of recent construction, like the Pompeiian house of Prince Napoleon in Paris, are pulled down out of a mere speculative mania to build something else, or to cut a long, straight street as uninteresting and as unsuggestive as the boxwood protractor which lies on a surveyor's desk.β
Ouida on Privacy
βBecause a man or woman more gifted than the common multitude bestows upon the world some poem or romance, some picture, statue, or musical composition, of excellence and beauty, by what possible right can the world pry into his or her privacy and discuss his or her fortunes and character? The work belongs to the public, the creator of the work does not. The invasion of private life and character never was so great or so general as it is in the last years of this century. It is born of two despicable parents, curiosity and malignity. Beneath all the flattery, which too frequently covers with flowers the snake of inquisitiveness, the snake's hiss of envy may be plainly heard by those who have ears to hear.β
What Ouida Said About Others
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Ouida on Benjamin Disraeli
βNo spectacle is more extraordinary than the power which Disraeli acquired after being laughed down by everyone; acquired, and wields still, so many years after his death. I think that his most potent philtre lay in his flattery. He flattered his Sovereign, his party, and the nation itself, with all the florid eloquence and subtle suggestion of which he was so admirable a master.β
About Ouida
Ouida (January 7, 1839 β January 25, 1908) was the pen name of the English novelist Maria Louise RamΓ© (although she preferred to be known as Marie Louise de la RamΓ©e).