Happy Birthday Ouida!

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

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.

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

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

What we love once, we love forever. Shall there be joy in heaven over those who repent, yet no forgiveness for them upon earth?

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

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

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.

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

All this while the little panel of pine wood remained over the chimney in the mill-kitchen with the cuckoo clock and the waxen Calvary, and sometimes it seemed to Nello a little hard that whilst his gift was accepted he himself should be denied.

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

The loss of our illusions is the only loss from which we never recover.

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

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

Petty laws breed great crimes.

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

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

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

I have know a thousand scamps; but I never met one who considered himself so. Self-knowledge isn't so common.