Oliphant Quotes & Sayings

There is a great deal in choosing colours that go well with one's complexion. People think of that for their dresses, but not for their rooms., which are of so much more importance. I should have liked blue, but blue gets so soon tawdry. I think, (...) that I have enough complexion at present to venture upon a pale spring green. — Mrs. Oliphant

At first, I always make it a point to give in to the prejudices of society. That is how I have always been so successful. I never went in the face of anybody's prejudices. Afterwards, you know, when one is known .... — Mrs. Oliphant

but still the mention of Mrs Burton and her luxuries had a certain stinging and stimulating effect upon her. She scorned, and yet would have been pleased to emulate that splendour. The account of it put her out of patience with her own humility, notwithstanding that she took pride in that humility, and felt it more consistent with the real dignity of her position than any splendour. And — Mrs. Oliphant

My man!" said the stranger, "I can promise you your master will give you a good wigging when he hears that you have sent me away." "A good - what, sir? " Brown grew red with indignation; but all the same a chill little doubt stole over him. This personage, who was so very sure of his welcome, might after all turn out to be a person whom he had no right to send away. "I said a wigging, my good man. Perhaps you don't understand that in England. We do in our place. — Mrs. Oliphant

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

As she stepped into the steamboat at Dover which was to convey her to scenes so new, Lucilla felt more and more that she who held the reorganisation of society in Carlingford in her hands was a woman with a mission. — Mrs. Oliphant

I believe that science is best left to scientists, that you cannot have managers or directors of science, it's got to be carried out and done by people with ideas, people with concepts, people who feel in their bones that they want to go ahead and develop this, that, or the other concept which occurs to them. — Mark Oliphant

Going after the unknown is always fascinating, I think. It becomes part of your life, this desire to know. — Mark Oliphant

No 'Middlemarch' for me," said Miss Barbara, with a wave of her hand. "I am too old for that. That means I've read it, my dear - the way an experienced reader like me can read a thing - in the air, in the newspapers, in the way everybody talks. No, that's not like going into a new neighborhood - that is getting to the secrets of the machinery, and seeing how everything, come the time, will run down, some to ill and harm, but all to downfall, commonplace, and prosiness. I have but little pleasure in that. And it's pleasure I want at my time of life. I'm too old to be instructed. If I have not learned my lesson by this time, the more shame to me, my dear." "But, Miss Barbara, you don't want only to be amused. Oh no: to have your heart touched, sometimes wrung even - to be so sorry, so anxious that you would like to interfere - to follow on and on to the last moment through all their troubles, still hoping that things will take a good turn." — Mrs. Oliphant

But there is nothing a man might not do, with you to encourage him. You make me wish to be a hero." He laughed, but Hester did not laugh. She gave him a keen look, in which there was a touch of disdain. " Do you really think," she said, " that the charm of inspiring, as you call it, is what any reasonable creature would prefer to doing? To make somebody else a hero rather than be a hero yourself? Women would need to be disinterested indeed if they like that best. I don't see it. Besides, we are not in the days of chivalry. What could you be inspired to do - make better bargains on your Stock Exchange? — Mrs. Oliphant

Journalism was looked upon as a more noble thing than it is now. I don't know if it carries the same cachet that it did then. — Pat Oliphant

It never was anything very splendid at the best," said he. He lifted the lamp from the table with a sort of abstraction, not remarking even my offer to take it from him, and led the way. He was on the verge of seventy, and looked his age; but it was a vigorous age, with no symptom of giving way. The circle of light from the lamp lit up his white hair and keen blue eyes and clear complexion; his forehead was like old ivory, his cheek warmly colored; an old man, yet a man in full strength. He was taller than I was, and still almost as strong. As he stood for a moment with the lamp in his hand, he looked like a tower in his great height and bulk. I reflected as I looked at him that I knew him intimately, more intimately than any other creature in the world, - I was familiar with every detail of his outward life; could it be that in reality I did not know him at all? * — Mrs. Oliphant

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

The fact that we're protected under that Constitution in exercising the right of free speech, it's a wonderful thing. You've got to come from somewhere else to realize how valuable it is. — Pat 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. — Margaret Oliphant

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

So many cartoonists draw the same year after year. When they find a style, they stick with it. They don't mess with innovation, and they become boring. — Pat Oliphant

One-newspaper towns are not good because all the surviving newspaper does is print money. They make 25 percent on their money every year, and if they go down to 22 percent, they start laying people off. — Pat Oliphant

I've been in Washington ever since 1981, trying to get out! — Pat Oliphant

I wish," cried the old gentleman, with a little spitefulness, "that this Married Women's Property Bill would push on and get itself made law. It would save us a great deal of trouble, and perhaps convince the world at the last how little able they are to be trusted with property. A nice mess they will make of it, and plenty of employment for young solicitors," he said, rubbing his hands. For this was before that important bill was passed, which has not had (like so many other bills) the disastrous consequences which Mr. Lynch foresaw. They — Mrs. 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. — Margaret Oliphant

The eye is deceitful as well as the heart. — Margaret Oliphant

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

There were dragons to slay in the old days. Nixon was a good dragon. — Pat Oliphant

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

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

I don't think there's more than half-a-dozen cartoons that I've been really truly happy with in all the time I've been doing it. — Pat Oliphant

Because I was right. For the two of us, home isn't a place. It's a person — Stephanie Perkins

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. — Margaret Oliphant

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

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

Truly there is nothing in the world so blessed or so sweet as the heritage of children. — 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") — Mrs. Oliphant

... Miss Marjoribanks was of the numerous class of religionists who keep up civilities with heaven, and pay all the proper attentions, and show their respect for the divine government in a manner befitting persons who know the value of their own approbation. — Mrs. Oliphant

My mind wanders to the other side of the courtyard, where St. Clair waits with Josh in Q-through-Z. I wonder if I have any classes with him. I mean, them. Classes with them. — Stephanie Perkins

Oh, there is nobody but the rector, mamma, and he knows we girls are not such fools as we are made to look. If Paul Markham were to marry that sort of person, I should laugh. It would be our revenge - Dolly's and mine - whom he never would condescend to look at. It would be nuts to me." "Did — Mrs. Oliphant

Besides,' she said, "it was not a hero I was thinking of. If anybody, it was Catherine Vernon." "Whom you don't like. These women, who step out of their sphere, they may do much to be respected, they may be of great use; but " "You mean that men don't like them," said Hester, with a smile; " but then women do; and, after all, we are the half of creation - or more. — Mrs. Oliphant

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

There's looks as speaks as strong as words ... — Margaret Oliphant

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

My dear, do not be hard upon me," said poor St. John; "I acknowledge, indeed, that it was my fault." "It was not your fault - but I don't blame anybody. There was illness and weakness, and some people can and some people can't," said Cicely, with that mercy and toleration which are always, I fear, more or less, the offspring of contempt. "Let — Mrs. Oliphant

That guys. Sideburns. You like him?"
My back squirms. "You've asked me that before."
"What I meant was," he says, flustered. "Your feelings haven't changed? Since you've been here?"
It takes a moment to consider the question. "It's not a matter of how I feel," I say at last. "I'm interested, but ... I don't know if he's still interested in me."
St. Clair edges closer. "Does he still call?"
"Yeah. I mean, not often. But yes."
"Right. Right, well," he says, blinking. "There's your answer. — Stephanie Perkins

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") — Mrs. Oliphant

I pondered what else I should take for him. Flowers seemed wrong; they're a love token, after all. I looked in the fridge, and popped a packet of cheese slices into the bag. All men like cheese. — Gail Honeyman

She could not go back now into the state which her mind had been in on that occasion. Everything was calmed and stilled, nay, chilled by this long interval. She could think of her Robert without the sinking of the heart - the sense of hopeless loneliness - which had moved her then. The wound had closed up: the blank, if it had not closed up, had acquired all the calmness of a long-recognized fact. She had made up her mind long since that the happiness which she could not then consent to part with, was over for her. That is the great secret of what is called resignation: to consent and agree that what you have been in the habit of calling happiness is done with; that you must be content to fill its place with something else, something less. Helen — Mrs. Oliphant

Every generation has a conceit of itself which elevates it, in its own opinion, above that which comes after it. — Margaret Oliphant

It was essential to do this job, hateful though it was, because we knew the Germans were hot on the trail. — Mark Oliphant

Yes, St. Claire. I like you. But I can't say it aloud, because he's my friend. And friends don't let other friends make drunken declarations and expect them to act upon them the next day — Stephanie Perkins

I see myself as an artist who happens to do cartoons. — Pat Oliphant

I worked with him for ten years until he died and it was the most wonderful time of my life. — Mark Oliphant

Whatever the reason, the fact is that there was no widespread catechetical teaching for Christian children. Things were going to change. The growing awareness of the need for Christian education was one of the chief forces behind the desire in the sixteenth century to reform the rite of baptism. — Hughes Oliphant Old

I think the experience forced me to consider how interested I was in political cartooning. After I was fired, I applied to other papers but political cartooning, like all cartooning, is a very tough field to break into. Newspapers are very reluctant to hire their own cartoonists when they can get Oliphant or MacNelly through syndication for a twentieth of the price. — Bill Watterson

Correct me if I'm wrong - the gizmo is connected to the flingflang connected to the watzis, watzis connected to the doo-dad connected to the ding dong. — Pat Oliphant

Even if you go to Australia today, it's very much like visiting a state you haven't been to. — Pat Oliphant

It is a great pity," she said, "a girl like you, that instead of teaching or doing needlework, you should not go to Vernon's, as you have a right to do, and work there." "I wish I could," Hester said, with eager eyes. "They tell me you wanted to do something like what I had done. Ah! you did not know it was all to be done over again. This life is full of repetitions. People think the same thing does not happen to you twice over, but it does in my experience, You would soon learn. A few years' work, and you would be an excellent man of business; but it can't be,"' "Why cannot it be? You did it. I should not be afraid - - " "I was old. I was past my youth. All that sort of thing was over for me. — Mrs. Oliphant

The gilded confines of the Beauty Hall were not my preferred habitat; like the chicken that had laid the eggs for my sandwich, I was more of a free-range creature. — Gail Honeyman

This, as it happened, had fallen to his sister's share instead, and Lucilla stood opposite to her looking at her, attentive and polite, and unresponsive. If Harry had only not been such a fool ten years ago! for Mrs Woodburn began to think now with Aunt Jemima, that Lucilla did not marry because she was too comfortable, and, without any of the bother, could have everything her own way. — Mrs. Oliphant

I, who had been in favour of nuclear energy for generating electricity ... I suddenly realised that anybody who has a nuclear reactor can extract the plutonium from the reactor and make nuclear weapons, so that a country which has a nuclear reactor can, at any moment that it wants to, become a nuclear weapons power. And I, right from the beginning, have been terribly worried by the existence of nuclear weapons and very much against their use. — Mark Oliphant

Spontaneity needs to be balanced by careful preparation and forethought. It needs to be supported by an intense prayer life on the part of the minister. One must be well experienced in prayer to lead in prayer. One can hardly lead if one does not know the way oneself. Spontaneity has to arise from a profound experience of prayer. — Hughes Oliphant Old

Somehow even a popular fallacy has an aspect of truth when it suits one's own case. — 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. — 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") — Mrs. Oliphant

All perfection is melancholy. — Margaret Oliphant

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

I hate changes of administrations, because I have all my villains in place and they are all taken away and replaced with faceless wonders nobody knows. — Pat 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. — Margaret Oliphant

Hester tried to smile when she recalled this, but could not, her heart being too sore, her whole being shaken. He thought so too perhaps, everybody thought so, and she alone, an involuntary rebel, would be compelled to accept the yoke which, to other women, was a simple matter, and their natural law. Why, then, was she made unlike others, or why was it so? Edward — Mrs. Oliphant

If I weren't standing next to your boyfriend, I'd be tempted to ask you out myself."
She blushes, and St. Clair bounds inside the box office and wrestles her into a hug. "Miiiiiiiiine!" he says.
"Cut it out." Anna pushes him off, laughing. "You'll get fired. And then I'll have to support your sorry arse for the rest of our lives. — Stephanie Perkins

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. — Margaret Oliphant

There has always been quite a strong black and white art tradition in Australia, with quite a large contingent of cartoonists, given the size of the population. — Pat Oliphant

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

Na, she's righted again," said a cool young fisherman, "and they've gotten down that unchancy mast. They maun have stout hearts and skeely hands that work her; but it's for life, and that learns folk baith pith and lear. There! - but it's owre now. — Mrs. Oliphant

I can always see what I've done wrong. I'm always learning. I'm the perennial student. — Pat Oliphant

Where in the Bible are we told in one verse not to do a thing and in the next to do it?

'Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.' Prov. xxvi. 4.

'Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.' Prov. xxvi. 5. — Samuel Grant Oliphant

I'm sorry," he says.
"What? Why?"
"You're fixing everything I set down." He nods at my hands, which are readjusting the elephant. "It wasn't polite of me to come in and start touching your things."
"Oh, it's okay," I say quickly, letting go of the figurine. "You can touch anything of mine you want."
He freezes. A funny look runs across his face before I realize what I've said. I didn't mean it like that.
Not that that would be so bad. — Stephanie Perkins

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

An outsider's point of view is always handy. — Pat Oliphant

My eye was drawn to a bright green hue, the same shade as a poisonous Amazonian frog, the tiny, delightfully deadly ones. — Gail Honeyman

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 ... — Margaret Oliphant

Don't you think a certain amount of civilisation is necessary before picture-frames will become remunerative? I don't think you could live by them in the bush. — Mrs. Oliphant

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

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

We're all idealistic when young. — Pat Oliphant

I lost my hair mixing a substance called white gunpowder on the kitchen table. — Mark 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. — Margaret Oliphant

Mrs Woodburn was not an enthusiastic young wife, but knew very well that marriage had its drawbacks, and had come to an age at which she could appreciate the comfort of having her own way without any of the bother. She gave a furtive glance after Lucilla, and could not but acknowledge to herself that it would be very foolish of Miss Marjoribanks to marry, and forfeit all her advantages, and take somebody else's anxieties upon her shoulders, and never have any money except what she asked from her husband. — Mrs. Oliphant

Some days you feel like this is really going well. You can tell. Other days, you're just drawing like a farmer and you don't know why. — Pat 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. — 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. — Margaret Oliphant

I had no idea how to respond, and opted for a smile, which serves me well on most occasions (not if it's something to do with death or illness, though -- I know that now.) — Gail Honeyman

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. — 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") — Mrs. Oliphant

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

The reader will probably think it very strange that Clare Arden should not have been utterly revolted by the thought that it was possible her kinsman could mean to make a speculation of her, and a mere stepping-stone to fortune. But she was not revolted. She had that personal objection to being married for her money which every woman has; but had not she herself been the heroine of the story, she would rather have felt approval than otherwise for Arthur Arden. What else could he do? she would have said to herself. He could not dig, and begging, even when one is little troubled with shame, is an unsatisfactory maintenance. And if everything could be put right by a suitable marriage, why should not he marry? It was the most natural, the most legitimate way of arranging everything. For the idea itself she had no horror. All she felt was a natural prejudice against being herself the subject of the transaction.{250} — Margaret Oliphant

If it were not for the fact that editors have become so timorous in these politically correct times, I would probably have a greater readership than I have. — Pat Oliphant

Ah! but even then, even now, had it been - not Raphael, perhaps, who was one of the Shaksperian men, without passion, who do the work of gods as if they were the humanest, commonest of labourers - but such a fiery soul as that of Michelangelo whom this woman had mated! But it was not so. She could have understood the imperfection which is full of genius; what she was slow to understand was the perfection in which no genius was. But she was calmed and changed by all she had gone through, and had learned how dearly such excellence may be bought, and that life is too feeble to bear so vast a strain. Accordingly, fortified and consoled by the one gleam of glory which had crowned his brows, Helen smiled upon her painter, and took pleasure in his work, even when it ceased to be glorious. That — Mrs. Oliphant

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

There is nothing so costly as bargains. — Margaret Oliphant

They stayed with my mum."
"That's ... weird."
"Not really. Mum is cool, easy to get along with."
I raise a teasing eyebrow. "So where did YOU guys stay?"
"Where we always stay." He stares back solemnly. "In our very separate dormitories. — Stephanie Perkins