22
" Now came the question, what should I do? “Nothing,” the correct thing, according to the governor. “Stand for the county,” my mother suggested. “Go as attaché to my cousin, the envoy to St. Petersburg,” my relatives opined, who had triumphed, with much unholy glory, over my rustication, as is the custom of relatives from time immemorial. "
― Ouida , Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
23
" The two men who were fencing were De Vigne and a smaller, slighter fellow; the one calm, cool, steady, and never at a disadvantage, the other, skilful indeed, but too hot, eager, and rapid: for in fencing, whether with the foils or the tongue, the grand secret is to be cool, since, in proportion to your tranquillity, grows your opponent’s exasperation! "
― Ouida , Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
24
" Why? For this reason — that nobody does. Hollingsworth and he were cornets together; yet Hollingsworth is as much a stranger to the real man as you or I. There are some fellows, you know, who don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves; he is one, I am another. Men are like snowballs: to begin with, it’s a piece of snow, soft and pure and malleable, and easily enough melted; but the snowball soon gets kicked about and mixed up with other snow, and knocked against stones and angles, and hurried, and shoved, and pushed along till, in sheer selfdefence, it hardens itself into a solid, impenetrable, immovable block of ice! "
― Ouida , Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
26
" Too well to compliment you on it. I ‘liked’ it as I liked, or rather I felt it — as I have felt, occasionally, the tender and holy beauty of Raphael, the hushed glories of a summer night, the mystical chimes of a starlit sea. Your voice did me good, as those things did, until the feverish fret and noise of practical life wore off their influence again.” Violet gave a deep sigh of delight “You make me so happy! I often think that the doc-’ trine of immortality has no better plea than the vague yearning for something unseen and unconceived, the unuttered desire which rises in us, at the sound of true music. I have heard music at which I could have shed more bitter tears than any I have known, for I have had no sorrow, and which answered the restless passions of my heart better than any human mind that ever wrote. "
― Ouida , Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
30
" I, the most knowing hand in Granta — I, who if I did pique myself on any one thing, piqued myself on my skill and knowledge in managing the beau sexe — I, to be told I did not know women! I pocketed the affront, however, as best I might, for I felt a growing respect for the Colonel, with his myriad talents, his brilliant reputation, and mysterious reserve; and told him I did not believe De Vigne cared an atom more for the Trefusis than for twenty others before her. “I hope so,” he answered; “but that chess they are playing yonder ends too often in checkmate. However, we will not prophesy so bad a fate for our friend; for worse he could not have than to fall into those soft hands. By the way, though, her hands are not soft, they are not the hands of a lady. "
― Ouida , Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
36
" How pleasant they were, those jolly college days! As I think of them, many kindly faces and joyous voices rise before me! Where are they all? Some lying with the colours on their breast beside the Euxine Sea, and along the line of the Pacific; some struck down by the assassin’s knife in the temples at Cawnpore; some sleeping beneath the sighing of the Delhi palms, or of the sad Atlantic waves; some wasting classic eloquence on country hinds, in moss-grown village churches; some fighting the great fight, between science and death, in the crowded hospital-wards of London; some wearing honour, and honesty, and truth from their hearts, in the breathless, up-hill press of the great world; — all of them, living or dead, scattered far away over the earth, since those old days, in the shadow of the academic walls! "
― Ouida , Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
37
" WHAT a pace one lives at through the season! And, when one is fresh to it, before one knows that its pleasant, frothy, syllabub surface is only a cover to intrigues, petty spites, jealousies, partisanships, manoeuvres; alike in St Stephen’s as in Belgravia; among uncompromising patriots as among poor foreigners farming private banks round about St James’s-street; among portly aristocratic mothers, trotting out their innocent daughters to the market, as among the gauze-winged, tinselled, hard-worked deities of the coulisses; — how agreeable it is! "
― Ouida , Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
38
" 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) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
40
" 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) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)