Best 41 quotes of Margaret Oliphant on MyQuotes

Margaret Oliphant

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    Margaret Oliphant

    Against the long years when family bonds make up all that is happiest in life, there must always be reckoned those moments of agitation and revolution, during which the bosom of a family is the most unrestful and disturbing place in existence.

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

    All perfection is melancholy.

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    Margaret Oliphant

    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.

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

    ... 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.

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    Margaret Oliphant

    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.

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

    I scarcely remember any writer who has ever ventured to say that the half of the work of the world is actually accomplished by women; and very few husbands who would be otherwise than greatly startled and amazed, if not indignant, if not derisive, at the suggestion of such an idea as that the work of their wives was equal to their own.

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    Margaret Oliphant

    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.

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    Margaret Oliphant

    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.

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

    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.

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

    Oh, never mind the fashion. When one has a style of one's own, it is always twenty times better.

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

    Perhaps, on the whole, embarrassment and perplexity are a kind of natural accompaniment to life and movement; and it is better to be driven out of your senses with thinking which of two things you ought to do than to do nothing whatever, and be utterly uninteresting to all the world.

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

    The incomprehensibleness of women is an old theory, but what is that to the curious wondering observation with which wives, mothers, and sisters watch the other unreasoning animal in those moments when he has snatched the reins out of their hands, and is not to be spoken to! . It is best to let him come to, and feel his own helplessness.

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

    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.

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

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

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    Margaret Oliphant

    ... up to this date, I have never been shut up in a separate room, or hedged off with any observances. My study, all the study I have attained to, is the little 2nd drawing room where all the (feminine) life of the house goes on; and I don't think I have ever had two hours undisturbed (except at night, when everybody is in bed) during my whole literary life.

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    Margaret Oliphant

    And there has been no attempt to investigate it,' I said, 'to see what it really is?' 'Eh, Cornel,' said the coachman's wife, 'wha would investigate, as ye call it, a thing that nobody believes in? Ye would be the laughing-stock of a' the country-side, as my man says.' 'But you believe in it,' I said, turning upon her hastily. The woman was taken by surprise. She made a step backward out of my way. 'Lord, Cornel, how ye frichten a body! Me! there's awful strange things in this world. An unlearned person doesna ken what to think. But the minister and the gentry they just laugh in your face. Inquire into the thing that is not! Na, na, we just let it be.' ("The Open Door")

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    Margaret Oliphant

    As Sandy and his wife warmed to the tale, one tripping up another in their eagerness to tell everything, it gradually developed as distinct a superstition as I ever heard, and not without poetry and pathos. How long it was since the voice had been heard first, nobody could tell with certainty. Jarvis's opinion was that his father, who had been coachman at Brentwood before him, had never heard anything about it, and that the whole thing had arisen within the last ten years, since the complete dismantling of the old house: which was a wonderfully modern date for a tale so well authenticated. According to these witnesses, and to several whom I questioned afterwards, and who were all in perfect agreement, it was only in the months of November and December that "the visitation" occurred. During these months, the darkest of the year, scarcely a night passed without the recurrence of these inexplicable cries. Nothing, it was said, had ever been seen - at least nothing that could be identified. Some people, bolder or more imaginative than the others, had seen the darkness moving, Mrs Jarvis said with unconscious poetry. ("The Open Door")

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    Margaret Oliphant

    Brentwood stands on that fine and wealthy slope of country, one of the richest in Scotland, which lies between the Pentland Hills and the Firth. In clear weather you could see the blue gleam-like a bent bow, embracing the wealthy fields and scattered houses of the great estuary on one side of you; and on the other the blue heights, not gigantic like those we had been used to, but just high enough for all the glories of the atmosphere, the play of clouds, and sweet reflections, which give to a hilly country an interest and a charm which nothing else can emulate. Edinburgh, with its two lesser heights - the Castle and the Calton Hill - its spires and towers piercing through the smoke, and Arthur's Seat lying crouched behind, like a guardian no longer very needful, taking his repose beside the well-beloved charge, which is now, so to speak, able to take care of itself without him - lay at our right hand. From the lawn and drawing-room windows we could see all these varieties of landscape. The colour was sometimes a little chilly, but sometimes, also, as animated and full of vicissitude as a drama. I was never tired of it. Its colour and freshness revived the eyes which had grown weary of arid plains and blazing skies. It was always cheery, and fresh, and full of repose. ("The Open Door")

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    Margaret Oliphant

    He was highly spoken of, everybody knew; but nobody knew who had spoken highly of him…

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    Margaret Oliphant

    In the park which surrounded our house were the ruins of the former mansion of Brentwood, a much smaller and less important house than the solid Georgian edifice which we inhabited. The ruins were picturesque, however, and gave importance to the place. Even we, who were but temporary tenants, felt a vague pride in them, as if they somehow reflected a certain consequence upon ourselves. The old building had the remains of a tower, an indistinguishable mass of mason-work, overgrown with ivy, and the shells of walls attached to this were half filled up with soil. I had never examined it closely, I am ashamed to say. There was a large room, or what had been a large room, with the lower part of the windows still existing, on the principal floor, and underneath other windows, which were perfect, though half filled up with fallen soil, and waving with a wild growth of brambles and chance growths of all kinds. This was the oldest part of all. At a little distance were some very commonplace and disjointed fragments of the building, one of them suggesting a certain pathos by its very commonness and the complete wreck which it showed. This was the end of a low gable, a bit of grey wall, all encrusted with lichens, in which was a common doorway. Probably it had been a servants' entrance, a backdoor, or opening into what are called "the offices" in Scotland. No offices remained to be entered-pantry and kitchen had all been swept out of being; but there stood the doorway open and vacant, free to all the winds, to the rabbits, and every wild creature. It struck my eye, the first time I went to Brentwood, like a melancholy comment upon a life that was over. A door that led to nothing - closed once perhaps with anxious care, bolted and guarded, now void of any meaning. It impressed me, I remember, from the first; so perhaps it may be said that my mind was prepared to attach to it an importance, which nothing justified. ("The Open Door")

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    Margaret Oliphant

    It was getting dark by the time I went out, and nobody who knows the country will need to be told how black is the darkness of a November night under high laurel bushes and yew-trees. I walked into the heart of the shrubberies two or three times, not seeing a step before me, till I came out upon the broader carriage-road, where the trees opened a little, and there was a faint grey glimmer of sky visible, under which the great limes and elms stood darkling like ghosts; but it grew black again as I approached the corner where the ruins lay. ("The Open Door")

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    Margaret Oliphant

    The village lay in the hollow, and climbed, with very prosaic houses, the other side. Village architecture does not flourish in Scotland. The blue slates and the grey stone are sworn foes to the picturesque; and though I do not, for my own part, dislike the interior of an old-fashioned pewed and galleried church, with its little family settlements on all sides, the square box outside, with its bit of a spire like a handle to lift it by, is not an improvement to the landscape. Still, a cluster of houses on differing elevations - with scraps of garden coming in between, a hedgerow with clothes laid out to dry, the opening of a street with its rural sociability, the women at their doors, the slow waggon lumbering along - gives a centre to the landscape. It was cheerful to look at, and convenient in a hundred ways. ("The Open Door")

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    Margaret Oliphant

    This was true enough, though it did not throw any light upon my perplexity. If we had heard of it to start with, it is possible that all the family would have considered the possession of a ghost a distinct advantage. It is the fashion of the times. We never think what a risk it is to play with young imaginations, but cry out, in the fashionable jargon, 'A ghost! - nothing else was wanted to make it perfect.' I should not have been above this myself. I should have smiled, of course, at the idea of the ghost at all, but then to feel that it was mine would have pleased my vanity. Oh, yes, I claim no exemption. The girls would have been delighted. I could fancy their eagerness, their interest, and excitement. No; if we had been told, it would have done no good - we should have made the bargain all the more eagerly, the fools that we are. ("The Open Door")