Margaret Oliphant Quotes

Temptations come, as a general rule, when they are sought.

To have a man who can flirt is next thing to indispensable to a leader of society.

One only says it is one's duty when one has something disagreeable to do.

The ideal is the flower-garden of the mind, and very apt to run to weeds unless carefully tended.

As for pictures and museums, that don't trouble me. The worst of going abroad is that you've always got to look at things of that sort. To have to do it at home would be beyond a joke.

For everybody knows that it requires very little to satisfy the gentlemen, if a woman will only give her mind to it.

Laughing is not the first expression of joy. ... A person laughs in idleness, for fun, not for joy. Joy has nothing, nothing but the old way of tears.

It is so seldom in this world that things come just when they are wanted.

Truly there is nothing in the world so blessed or so sweet as the heritage of children.

It has been my fate in a long life of production to be credited chiefly with the equivocal virtue of industry, a quality so excellent in morals, so little satisfactory in art.

Even in misery we love to be foremost, to have the bitter in our cup acknowledged as more bitter than that of others.

there are some people who never learn; indeed, few people learn by experience, so far as I have ever seen.

Good works may only be beautiful sins, if they are not done in a true spirit.

All perfection is melancholy.

The middle of life is the testing-ground of character and strength.

Spring cold is like the poverty of a poor man who has had a fortune left him - better days are coming.

It is often easier to justify one's self to others than to respond to the secret doubts that arise in one's own bosom.

What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain?

There is nothing more effectual in showing us the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it sympathetically through the ears, as it were, of a skeptic.

There's looks as speaks as strong as words.

I have my own way of dividing people, as I suppose most of us have. There are those whom I can talk to, and those whom I can't.

... I have always been a disappointment to my friends. I have no gift of talk, not much to say; and though I have always been an excellent listener, that only succeeds under auspicious circumstances.

A hotel is a hotel all the world over, a place essentially vulgar, commonplace, venal, the travesty of a human home.

Terror of being found out is not always a preservative, it sometimes hurries on the act which it ought to prevent.

Many love me, but by none am I enough beloved.

Somehow even a popular fallacy has an aspect of truth when it suits one's own case.

Married people do stand up so for each other when you say a word, however they may fight between themselves.

Next to happiness, perhaps enmity is the most healthful stimulant of the human mind.

Imagination is the first faculty wanting in those that do harm to their kind.

There is nothing so costly as bargains.

every generation has a conceit of itself which elevates it, in its own opinion, above that which comes after it.

I think reading a novel is almost next best to having something to do.

Temptations come as a general rule when they are sought.