Marie Corelli
I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night.Collection: Pet
Such lovely warmth of thought and delicacy of colour are beyond all praise, and equally beyond all thanks!Collection: Thankful
Fancy your having no sunshine in London yesterday! Here it was glorious, like full summer, and I sat up with the window wide open, listening to the discourse of two amorous thrushes.
I must not say what I truly think, or you will tell me I flatter you-but I can only speak what I feel-and very often I cannot even do that when the feeling is very deep.
I entirely agree with you about the obscurity of Mrs Browning's line about the stars. It is far-fetched. She wanted to express something which she found beyond expression.
The Browning love story? It is an ideal, all too rare, and yet I hardly think it strange. It would have been far stranger had the fates allowed those two brilliant passionate souls to beat themselves out in silence.
You should always be well and bright, for so you do your best work; and you have so much beautiful work to do. The world needs it, and you must give it!
Nothing gives small minds a better handle for hatred than superiority.Collection: Giving
Pleasure for others is the only pleasure possible to me. I assure you I'm quite selfish! - I'm greedy for the happiness of those I love - and if they can't or won't be happy I'm perfectly miserable.Collection: Selfish
Wealth acts merely as a kind of mirror to show you human nature at its worst.Collection: Mirrors
What a fool cannot learn he laughs at, thinking that by his laughter he shows superiority instead of latent idiocy.Collection: Laughter
There is nothing so inconvenient in this world as an absolutely truthful person, who can both speak and write, and has the courage of his convictions. One can always arrange matters with liars ... But with the man or woman who holds truth dearer than life, and honor more valuable than advancement, there is nothing to be done, now that governments cannot insist on the hemlock-cure, as in the case of Socrates.Collection: Truth
There is no wealth but love.Collection: Love
Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning, - nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call 'logic.' The truest compass of life is spiritual instinct.Collection: Spiritual
An opinion which excites no opposition at all is not worth having!Collection: Opinion
Love clamors far more incessantly and passionately at a closed gate than an open one!Collection: Love
The Church is a system, - but whether it is as much founded on the teaching of our Lord, who was divine, as on the teaching of St. Paul, who was not divine, is a question to me of much perplexity.Collection: Teaching
Flowers are like visible messages from God.Collection: Flower
What was the use of trying to expound a truth, if the majority preferred a lie?Collection: Truth
When one loves God better than the Church is one called a heretic?Collection: Church
Great Poets discover themselves. Little Poets have to be 'discovered' by somebody else.Collection: Littles
Greatness is always envied - it is only mediocrity that can boast of a host of friends.Collection: Greatness
No one is contented in this world, I believe. There is always something left to desire, and the last thing longed for always seems the most necessary to happiness.Collection: Believe
There is no Death,/What seems so is transition.Collection: Grief
How foolish it would be if women did not obey men. The world would be all confusion!Collection: Men
Years should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or consider them? In the world of wild Nature, time is measured by seasons only-the bird does not know how old it is-the rose-tree does not count its birthdays!Collection: Time
Imagination is the supreme endowment of the poet and romanticist. It is a kind of second sight, which conveys the owner of it to places he has never seen, and surrounds him with strange circumstances of which he is merely the spiritual eyewitness.Collection: Spiritual
One of the advantages or disadvantages of the way in which we live in these modern days is that we are ceasing to feel. That is to say we do not permit ourselves to be affected by either death or misfortune, provided these natural calamities leave our own persons unscathed.Collection: Compassion
Love, if it be love indeed, asks no permission as to where it shall seek vantage ground or gain its victory - it is of all powers the most unfettered and the one which takes the widest course of largest liberty.Collection: Victory
There is nothing so depressing as a constant contemplation of one's self, and the greatest moral cowardice in the world's opinion comes from consulting one's own personal convenience.Collection: Depressing
nobody ever intends to be old.Collection: Age
I attribute my good fortune to the simple fact that I have always tried to write straight from my own heart to the hearts of others.Collection: Writing
It is not so difficult to win love as to keep it!Collection: Winning
For though there never was so much reading matter put before the public, there was never less actual 'reading' in the truest and highest sense of the term than there is at present.Collection: Reading
Fame, or notoriety, whichever that special noise may be called when the world like a hound 'gives tongue' and announces that the quarry in some form of genius is at bay, is apt to increase its clamor in proportion to the aloofness of the pursued animal.Collection: Animal
the world is not always kind to a clever woman even when she is visibly known to be earning her own living. There are always spiteful tongues wagging in the secret corners and byways, ready to assert that her work is not her own and and that some man is in the background, helping to keep her!Collection: Clever
work is happiness. No one can take my work from me and therefore no one can take my happiness from me.Collection: Work
the beginning of my history is - love. It is the beginning of every man and every woman's history, if they are only frank enough to admit it.Collection: Men
in my opinion, the Divine is revealed to all men once at least in their lives.Collection: Men
Education! Is it education to teach the young that their chances of happiness depend on being richer than their neighbors? Yet that is what it all tends to. Get on! - be successful!Collection: Education
Let me be mad, then, by all means! mad with the madness of Absinthe, the wildest, most luxurious madness in the world! Vive la folie! Vive l'amour! Vive l'animalisme! Vive le Diable!Collection: Mean
Hate is a grand, a strong quality! It makes nations, it builds up creeds! If men loved one another what should they need of a Church?Collection: Strong
A criminal is twice a criminal when he adds hypocrisy to his crime.Collection: Hypocrisy
And out of heart's pain comes heart's peace; and out of desire, accomplishment.Collection: Pain
Art is sexless; - good work is eternal, no matter whether it is man or woman who has accomplished it. ... Ah, but the world will never own woman's work to be great even if it be so, because men give the verdict, and man's praise is for himself and his own achievements always.Collection: Art
A fine morning's killing, ay! All their necks wrung - all dead birds! Once they could fly - fly and swim! Fly and swim! All dead now - and sold cheap in the open market!Collection: Morning
Patriotism is understood to be that virtue which consists in serving one's country; but in what way is this 'Patria' or country served by slaying its able bodied men in thousands?Collection: Country
religion is poetry, - poetry is religion.Collection: Poetry
it seems a silly kind o' business to bring us into the world at all for no special reason 'cept to take us out of it again just as folks 'ave learned to know us a bit and find us useful.Collection: Life
The Press nowadays is not a literary press; classic diction and brilliancy of style do not distinguish it by any means.Collection: Mean