Margaret Oliphant
FameRank: 4

"Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant" (4 April 1828 – 25 June 1897), was a Scottish novelist and historical writer, who usually wrote as "Mrs. Oliphant". Her fictional works encompass "domestic realism, the historical novel and tales of the supernatural".

If you enjoy these quotes, be sure to check out other famous novelists! More Margaret Oliphant on Wikipedia.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution -- this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

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