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Marie Corelli

  • No one is contented is this world, I believe. There is always something left to desire, and the last thing longed for always seems the most necessary to happiness.

  • 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!

  • ... 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.

  • ... religion is poetry, — poetry is religion.

  • And out of heart's pain comes heart's peace; and out of desire, accomplishment.

  • 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.

    • Marie Corelli,
    • in Jerome K. Jerome, ed., My First Book ()
  • How foolish it would be if women did not obey men. The world would be all confusion!

  • ... nobody ever intends to be old.

  • ... she managed to grow stouter every day with a persistence and fortitude which denoted the reserved forces of her nature ...

  • 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.

  • An opinion which excites no opposition at all is not worth having!

  • 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.

  • ... in my opinion, the Divine is revealed to all men once at least in their lives.

  • When one loves God better than the Church is one called a heretic?

  • Flowers are like visible messages from God.

  • 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.

  • Stretch out your hand! — let no human soul wait for a benediction.

  • Love clamors far more incessantly and passionately at a closed gate than an open one!

  • 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.

  • What was the use of trying to expound a truth, if the majority preferred a lie?

  • 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?

  • ... though a dealer in meat, groceries, and other food stuffs may obtain compensation if his wares are wilfully misrepresented to the buying public, the purveyor of thoughts or ideas has no remedy when such thoughts or ideas are deliberately and purposefully falsified to the world through the press.

    • Marie Corelli,
    • "A Vital Point of Education," Free Opinions ()
  • 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.

    • Marie Corelli,
    • "A Vital Point of Education," Free Opinions ()
  • A criminal is twice a criminal when he adds hypocrisy to his crime.

    • Marie Corelli,
    • "Unchristian Clerics," Free Opinions ()
  • Great Poets discover themselves. Little Poets have to be 'discovered' by somebody else.

    • Marie Corelli,
    • "On the Making of Little Poets," Free Opinions ()
  • 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.

    • Marie Corelli,
    • "The Power of the Pen," Free Opinions ()
  • The Press nowadays is not a literary press; classic diction and brilliancy of style do not distinguish it by any means.

    • Marie Corelli,
    • "The Power of the Pen," Free Opinions ()
  • Greatness is always envied — it is only mediocrity that can boast of a host of friends.

    • Marie Corelli,
    • "The Happy Life," Free Opinions ()
  • There is no Death, / What seems so is transition.

  • Nothing gives small minds a better handle for hatred than superiority ...

  • ... years ... should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or to 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!

  • It is not so difficult to win love as to keep it!

  • 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?

    • Marie Corelli,
    • "Savage Glory," in Nash's Magazine ()
  • ... 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.

  • 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.

  • ... 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!

  • 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 ...

  • 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.

  • ... 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 ...

  • 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.

    • Marie Corelli,
    • in Thomas F.G. Coates and R.S. Warren Bell, Marie Corelli ()
  • ... work is happiness. No one can take my work from me and therefore no one can take my happiness from me.

    • Marie Corelli,
    • in Thomas F.G. Coates and R.S. Warren Bell, Marie Corelli ()
  • [When asked why she never married:] 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 the afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night.

    • Marie Corelli,
    • in James Crichton-Browne, What the Doctor Thought ()

Marie Corelli, English writer, spiritualist

(1855 - 1924)

Real name: Mary “Minnie” Mackay.