Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) Quotes

“As a postscript, it is interesting to note that on a visit to London in 1886, Ouida did meet Oscar Wilde and indeed published four articles in his magazine Woman’s World between 1888 and 1889; her experience of knowing Wilde, who described her as “the last romantic”, did influence her later works, however superficially.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“Four piles of dead were heaped together like broken meat on a butcher’s stall — not a whit more tenderly — and cleared out of the way like carrion; the ground was broken up into great pools of blood, black and noisome; troops of flies were swarming like mimic vultures on bodies still warm, on men still conscious, crowding over the festering wounds (for these men had lain there since Saturday at noon!), buzzing their death-rattle in ears already maddened with torture. That was what we saw in the Malakoff, what we saw a little later in the Great Redan, where among cookhouses, brimful of human blood, English and Russian lay clasped together in a fell embrace, petrified by death; where the British lay in heaps, mangled beyond recognition by their dearest friends, or scorched and blackened by the recent explosions; and where — how strange they looked there! — there stood outside the entrance of one of the houses, a vase of flowers, and a little canary!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“close to the objects of her attachment, the little lovely yellow chickens, surely the prettiest of all new-born things; humiliatingly pretty beside the rough ugliness of new-born man, who piques himself on being lord of all created creatures; God knows why, except that he is slowest in development, and quickest in evil!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“We believe in the innocent demoiselles, who look so naïve, and such sweet English rosebuds at morning fêtes, and do not dream those glossy braids cover empty, but world-shrewd little heads, ever plotting how to eclipse dearest Cecilia, or win old Hautton’s coronet; we accept their mamma’s invitations, and think how kindly they are given, not knowing that we are only asked because we bring Shako of the Guards with us, who is our bosom chum, and has fifteen thousand a year, and that, Shako fairly hooked, we, being younger sons, shall be gently dropped.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“if the truth were always in our minds, or the future always plain before us, should we make the fifty false steps that the wisest man amongst us is certain to rue before half his sands are run? If they knew that before night was down the sea-foam would be whirling high, and the curlews screaming in human fear, and the gay little boat lying keel upwards on the salt ocean surf, would the pleasure-party set out so fearlessly in the morning sunshine, with champagne flowing and bright eyes glancing, and joyous laughter ringing over the golden sands and up to the fleecy heavens?”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“So we, in thoughtless play, twist the first gleaming and silky threads of the fatal cord which will cling about our necks, fastened beyond hope of release, as long as our lives shall last!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“O nations! closely should you treasure your great men, for by them alone will the future know of you. Flanders in her generations has been wise. In his life she glorified this greatest of her sons, and in his death she magnifies his name. But her wisdom is very rare.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“So, on the whole, it was well with them, very well; and Patrasche, meeting on the highway or in the public streets the many dogs who toiled from daybreak into nightfall, paid only with blows and curses, and loosened from the shafts with a kick to starve and freeze as best they might — Patrasche in his heart was very grateful to his fate, and thought it the fairest and the kindliest the world could hold.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“Ouida is not afraid to play with gender roles and her explorations of femininity in men and masculinity in women, were considered avant-garde”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“Ouida’s first novel was published in three volumes in 1863, though it had previously been released in serial form as Granville de Vigne in The New Monthly magazine from January 1861 to June 1863, as was the common practice at the time. The author was only twenty-four years old at the time, but was later to claim that this was not her first attempt at writing and that her 1867 novel Idalia was written when she was just sixteen.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“A little farther on, in the old playing-field, there were the wickets, and the bats, and the jumping poles, and four or five boys, in their shirt sleeves and their straw hats, enjoying their half-holiday, as we had done before them. So life goes on; when one is bowled out, another is ready to step into his shoes, and, no matter how many the ball of death may knock over, the cricket of life is kept up the same, and players are never wanting!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“IT is strange how the outer world surrounds yet never touches the inner; how the gay and lighter threads of life intervene yet never mingle with those that are darkest and sternest, as the parasite clings to the forest tree, united yet ever dissimilar!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“pale, but resolute as Eponina’s or Gertrude von der Wart’s — and I think the martyrdom of endurance is worse than the martyrdom of action!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“which might have touched into sympathy, even the coldest nature. But (I do not think one can blame my Lady Molyneux; if she was born without feelings, perhaps she was hardly more responsible for the non-possession of them, than the idiot for the total absence of brain) her mother was not even silenced.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“Sell yourself?” repeated the peeress. Fine ladies are not often fond of hearing things called by their proper names, “Yes, sell myself,” repeated Violet, bitterly, leaning against the mantelpiece, with a painful smile upon her lips. “Would you not put me up to auction, knock me down to the highest bidder? Marriage is the mart, mothers the auctioneers, and he who bids the highest wins. Women are like racers, brought up only to run for Cups, and win handicaps for their owners.” “Nonsense!” said her mother, impatiently. “You have lost your senses, I think. There is no question of ‘selling,’ as you term it. Marriage is a social compact, of course, where alliances suitable in position, birth, and wealth, are studied. Why should you pretend to be wiser than all the rest of the world? Most amiable and excellent women have married without thinking love a necessary ingredient Why should you object to a good alliance if it be a mariage de convenance?”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“the amateurs, who had come out to see what was doing in the Crimea, as they went other years to Norwegian fishing or Baden roulette, were scattered about in yachting costume, and stirred to a little excitement as the Russian shells began to burst among us, and the bombs to fall with thuds loud enough to startle the strongest nerves.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“Poor child! you are much fit for a nurse! What do you know of wounds, of sickness, of death? What qualification have you to induce them to give you such an office? Do you think they would take such a fair face as yours among the sick wards? No, no, that is impracticable. You must wait: the lesson hardest of all to learn — one, I dare say, you have never had to learn at al!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“Montressor saw that without the freedom of air, to which she was accustomed, she would never be better. Miss Russel’s rector, like many another rector, since he “knew nothing of the young person,” would not have thought of wasting one of his spare beds on a stranger “of no connexions,” and “you know, my dear, for anything we can tell, perhaps of no very pure moral character,” as he remarked to his wife, previous to rustling into church in his stiff and majestic surplice, and giving for his text the story of Mary Magdalene.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“we medical men, my dear lady, have no time to stop for conventionalities when life is in the balance. If Major de Vigne were anywhere in this country I would make him come and quiet my patient by a sight of him; all she does is to sob quietly, and murmur that man’s name to herself, and if we cannot get at the mind we cannot work miracles with the body. Any shock would be better than this dreamy lethargy; there is no knowing to what mischief it may not lead. I shall tell her he is gone to the Crimea!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“It was with bitter hearts and deadly thoughts that we, the remnant of the Six Hundred, rode back, leaving the flower of the Light Brigade dead or dying before those murderous Russian guns; — and it was all done, all over, in five-and-twenty minutes — less than a fast up-wind fox-hunt would have taken at home!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“If they did not credit it, we did. We knew it was against all maxims of war for Cavalry to act without support, or infantry at hand. We knew that in all probability few indeed, if any of us, would ever come back from that rapid and deadly ride. But the order was given. There were the guns — and away we went, quickening from trot to canter, and from canter to gallop, as we drew nearer to them. On we went, spurring our horses across the space that divided us from those grim fiery mouths.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“Our turn was near at hand. An hour after we received the order to advance on the Russian guns. With the blame, on whomsoever it may lie of that rash order, I have nothing to do. That vexatious question can never be settled, since he on whose shoulders they place it lies in the valley of Balaklava, the first who fell, and cannot raise his voice to reply, or give the lie, if it be a lie, to his calumniators. If Louis Nolan were to blame, his love for our Arm, and his jealousy over its honour, his belief that Light Cavalry would do the work of demigods, and his irritation that hitherto we had not been given the opportunity we might have had, must plead his excuse; and I think his brilliant courage, and the memory of that joyous cheer which ended in the wild death-cry which none who heard can ever forget, might silence the angry jar and jangle of contention above his grave, and set the seals of oblivion upon his error!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“But when I think of them all, my dead friends, whose bodies lie thick where the sweet wild lavender is blowing over the barren steppes of the Chersonese this summer’s day, I remember, wrathfully, how civilians, by their own warm hearths, sat and dictated measures by which whole regiments, starving with cold, sickened and died; and how Indian officers, used to the luxurious style of Eastern warfare and travel, asserted those privations to be “nothing,” which they were not called to bear; and I fear — I fear — that England may one day live to want such sons of hers as she let suffer and rot on the barren plains of the Crimea, in such misery as she would shudder to entail on a pauper or a convict Few of us will ever forget our first bivouac on the Chersonese soil — that pitiless drenching down-pour of sheets of ink-black water!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“Days, when you could not stroll on the beach, without finding at your feet a corpse, hastily thrust into the loosened sand, for dogs to gnaw and vultures to make their meal, or look across the harbour without seeing some dead body floating, upright and horrible, in the face of the summer sun.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“ALADYN and Devno! — those green stretching meadows, those rich dense forests, catching the golden glow of the sunshine of the East — those sloping hill-sides, with the clematis, and acacia, and wild vine clinging to them, and the laughing waters of lake and stream sleeping at their base — who could believe that horrible pestilential vapour stole up from them, like a murderer in the dark, and breathing fever, ague, and dysentery into the tents of a slumbering Army, stabbed the sleepers while they lay, unconscious of the assassin’s hand that was draining away their life and strength!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“When he had once determined on a thing he never looked back; sometimes it had been better for him if he had. Yet, in the long run, I have known more mischief done by indecision of character than anything else in the world, and he is safe to be the strongest and stoutest-hearted who never looks back, whether he has determined on quitting Sodom or on staying in it The evil lies in hasty judgment, not in prompt action.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“It did not induce brain fever, or harm her so, belles lectrices. If we went down under every stroke in that way as novelists assume, we should all be loved of Heaven if that love be shown by early graves, as the old Greeks say.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“swept gently in till the air was full of the dreamy and voluptuous fragrance which lulls the senses and woos the heart to those softer moments which, could they but last, would make men never need to dream of heaven. Such hours are rare; what wonder if, to win them, we risk all, if in them we cry with the Lotus Eaters, “Let us alone. What is it that will last? All things sûre taken from us and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave? All things have rest and ripen toward the grave In silence; ripen, fall, and cease. Give us long rest or death; dark death or dreamful ease.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“Who upholds that the good is oft interred with our bones. ’Tisn’t true though it is Shakspeare who says it; if you leave your family or your pet hospital a good many thousands, you will get the cardinal virtues, and a trifle more, in letters of gold on your tomb; though if you have lived up to your income, or forgotten to insure, any penny-alining La Monnoye will do to scribble your epitaph, and break off with “C’est trop mentir pour cinq écus!”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)

“the love of Francesca and Paolo, often essayed by artists, yet never rendered, even by Ary Scheffer, as Dante would have had it, and as it was rendered here. There were no vulgarities of a fabled Hell; there were the two, alone in that true torture — Ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria —  yet happy, because together. Her face and form were in full light, his in shadow. Heart beating against heart, their arms round each other, they looked down into each other’s eyes. On his face were the fierce passions, against which he had had no strength, mingled with deep and yearning regret for the fate he had drawn in with his own. On hers, lifted up to him, was all the love at sight of which he who beheld it “swooned even as unto death;” the love — — placer si forte, Che come vedi ancor non m’abbandona — the love which made hell, paradise; and torture together, dearer than heaven alone.”
― Ouida, Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated)