Margaret Oliphant quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by Margaret Oliphant

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Top Margaret Oliphant Quotes

Browse top 12 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Margaret Oliphant.

Favorite Margaret Oliphant Quotes

1. "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")" ~ Margaret Oliphant

2. "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")" ~ Margaret Oliphant

3. "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")" ~ Margaret Oliphant

4. "He was highly spoken of, everybody knew; but nobody knew who had spoken highly of him…" ~ Margaret Oliphant

5. "Temptations come, as a general rule, when they are sought." ~ Margaret Oliphant

6. "I suppose every generation has a conceit of itself which elevates it, in its own opinion, above that which comes after it. ("The Open Door")" ~ Margaret Oliphant

7. "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")" ~ Margaret Oliphant

8. "To have a man who can flirt is next thing to indispensable to a leader of society." ~ Margaret Oliphant

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

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

11. "What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain?" ~ Margaret Oliphant

12. "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." ~ Margaret Oliphant

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Conviction, as Michelstaedter wrote, is the present possession of one's own life and one's own person, the ability to live each moment to the full, not goading oneself madly into burning it up fast and using it with a view to an all too imminent future, thus destroying it in the hope that life -- the whole of life -- may pass swiftly."
Author: Claudio Magris