Ouida

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

"Fame has only the span of the day they say. But to live in the hearts of people-that is worth something."

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

"An easygoing husband is the one indispensable comfort of life."

"What is it that love does to a woman? Without it she only sleeps with it alone she lives."

"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."

"It is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings it is the soft luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams."

"The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity."

"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."

"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"

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

"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"

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

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

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