Ada Leverson
Ada Leverson
Ada Esther Leversonwas a British writer who is known for her friendship with Oscar Wilde and for her work as a witty novelist of the fin-de-siècle...
pain joy satisfaction
There is, of course, no joy so great as the cessation of pain; in fact all joy, active or passive, is the cessation of some pain, since it must be the satisfaction of a longing, even perhaps an unconscious longing.
salmon
Thou canst not serve both cod and salmon.
real literature unexpected
Absurdly improbable things are quite as liable to happen in real life as in weak literature.
women intuition quality
Feminine intuition, a quality perhaps even rarer in women than in men.
gambling suspense world
Suspense is torture ... but delightful--or there'd be no gambling in the world.
husband passion home
Some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from.
wish ifs
It's always something to get one's wish, even if the wish is a failure.
suffering causes life-is
A morbid propensity that causes great suffering in domestic life is often curiously infectious to the very person for whom it creates most suffering.
passion worship fades
When a passion is not realized ... it fades away, or becomes ideal worship--Dante--Petrarch--that sort of thing!
betrayal two betrayed
As a rule the person found out in a betrayal of love holds, all the same, the superior position of the two. It is the betrayed one who is humiliated.
children pie giving
It is all very well to say that children are happier with mud pies and rag dolls than with these elaborate delights. There may be something in this theory, but when their amusements are carried to such a point of luxurious and imaginative perfection it certainly gives them great and even unlimited enjoyment at the time.
real men intuition
The marvellous instinct with which women are usually credited seems too often to desert them on the only occasions when it would be of any real use. One would say it was there for trivialities only, since in a crisis they are usually dense, fatally doing the wrong thing. It is hardly too much to say that most domestic tragedies are caused by the feminine intuition of men and the want of it in women.
nice mean men
To a woman--I mean, a nice woman--there is no such thing as men. There is a man; and either she is so fond of him that she can talk of nothing else, however unfavourably, or so much in love with him that she never mentions his name.
beautiful book oscars
Looking at the poems of John Gray when I saw the tiniest rivulet of text meandering through the very largest meadow of margin, I suggested to Oscar Wilde that he should go a step further than these minor poets; he should publish a book all margin; full of beautiful, unwritten thoughts.