41
" Miss Molyneux, what a treat!” smiled Sabretasche, who could say impudent things so gracefully, that every one liked them from his lips. “You have the candour to say what every other young lady thinks. We know you all like us very much, but none of you will ever admit it! You say you enjoyed the review? I thought no belle, after her first season, ever condescended to ‘enjoy’ anything.” “Don’t they!” laughed Violet; “how I pity them! I am an exception, then, for I enjoy an immense number of things; everything, indeed, except my presentation, where I was ironed quite flat, and very nearly crushed to death, and, finally, came before her Majesty in a state of collapse, like a maimed india-rubber ball. Not enjoy things! Why, I enjoy my morning gallop on Bonbon; I enjoy my flowers, and birds, and dogs. I delight in the opera, I adore waltzing, I perfectly idolise music, and the day when a really good book comes out, or a really good painting is exhibited, I am in a seventh heaven. Not enjoy things! Oh, Colonel Sabretasche, when I cease to enjoy life, I hope I shall cease to live! "
― Ouida , Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
42
" A young man married is a man that’s marred.’ That’s a golden rule, Arthur; take it to heart. Anne Hathaway, I have not a doubt, suggested it; experience is the sole abestos, only unluckily one seldom gets it before one’s hands are burnt irrevocably. Shakespeare took to wife the ignorant, rosy-cheeked, Warwickshire peasant girl, at eighteen! Poor fellow! I picture him, with all his untried powers, struggling like new-born Hercules for strength and utterance, and the great germ of poetry within him, tinging all the common realities of life with its rose hue; genius giving him power to see with God-like vision, the ‘fairies nestling in the cowslip chalices,’ and the golden gleam of Cleopatra’s sails; to feel the ‘spiced Indian air’ by night, and the wild working of kings’ ambitious lust; to know by intuition, alike the voices of nature unheard by common ears, and the fierce schemes and passions of a world from which social position shut him out! "
― Ouida , Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
48
" 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) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
51
" I believe you,” he said, gently; “there arc sensitive plants, so fresh and fair, that it is a sin they should ever have to shiver in rude hands, and learn to bend with the world’s breath. But live as long as we have, and you will know that the deep feeling of which you are thinking is never found in unison with the poetic and drivelling sentiment we ridicule. Boys’ sorrows vent themselves in words — men’s griefs are voiceless. If ever you feel — pray God you never may — vital suffering, you will find that it will never seek solace in confidences, never lament itself, but rather hug its torture closer, as the Spartan child hugged the fierce wolf-fangs. You will find the difference between the fictitious sorrows which run abroad proclaiming their own wrongs; and the grief which lies next the heart night and day, and, like the iron cross of the Romish priest, eats it slowly, but none the less surely, away. "
― Ouida , Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
53
" 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) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)
55
" That fellow De Vigne’s dreaming away in comfort, while we’re dragged out by the heels, for a lot of confounded humbug and form,” lamented Curly to me as we entered; while the readers hurried the prayers over, in that singsong recitative in favour with collegemen — a cross between the drone of a gnat, and the whine of a Suffolk peasant. We dozed comfortably, sitting down, and getting up, at the right times, by sheer force of habit; or read Dumas, or Balzac, under cover of our prayer-books. "
― Ouida , Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 26)