Emmuska Orczy > Quotes

“The weariest nights, the longest days, sooner or later must perforce come to an end.”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy

“They seek him here, they seek him there
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere
Is he in heaven or is he in hell?
That demned elusive Pimpernel”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“Had he but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear--a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love and as soon as her light footstep had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade, where her tiny hand had rested last.”
― Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“Money and titles may be hereditary," she would say, "but brains are not,"...”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“Sink me! Your taylors have betrayed you! T'wood serve you better to send THEM to Madam Guillotine”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“Odd's fish, m'dear! The man can't even tie his own cravat!”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy

“A woman's heart is such a complex problem - the owner thereof is often most incompetent to find the solution to this puzzle.”
― Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“We must prove to the world that we are all nincompoops”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“Thus human beings judge of one another, superficially, casually, throwing contempt on one another, with but little reason, and no charity.”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“The sound of distant breakers made her heart ache with melancholy. She was in the mood when the sea has a saddening effect upon the nerves. It is only when we are very happy that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys.”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“Look at this limp cravet. And the sad state of those cuffs. I can hardly bring myself to look upon them.”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy

“I take it, sir, that you do not approve of our new society."

"Approval, sir, in my opinion, demands the attainment of perfection. And in that sense, you rather overrate the charms of your society. I'faith, for one thing, it does seem monstrous ill-dressed for any society, even a new one.”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy

“When will you give up these mad adventures, and leave others to fight their own battles and to save their own lives as best they may?'

When your ladyship has ceased to be the most admired woman in Europe, namely, when I am in my grave.”
― Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“She said nothing, and Sir Andrew, too, was silent, yet those two young people understood one another, as young people have a way of doing all the world over, and have done since the world began.”
― Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“She, at least, ought to have known that he was wearing a mask, and having found that out, she should have torn it from his face, whenever they were alone together....Her love for him had been paltry and weak, easily crushed by her own pride”
― Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when it is crushed.”
― Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“Now, when their glances met, they understood one another. The power that lay within both their souls had met, and, as it were, clasped hands. They accepted one another's sacrifice. Hers, mayhap, was the more complete of the two, because for her his absence would mean weary waiting, the dull heartache so terrible to bear.”
― Baroness Emma Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“He was calmly eating his soup, laughing with pleasant good-humour, as if he had come all the way to Calais for the express purpose of enjoying supper at this filthy inn, in the company of his arch-enemy.”
― Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“The present is not so glorious but that I should wish to dwell a little in the past.”
― Baroness Emma Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“It does seem simple, doesn't it?' she said, with a final bitter attempt at flippancy, 'when you want to kill a chicken...you take hold of it...then you wring its neck...it's only the chicken who does not find it quite so simple. Now you hold a knife at my throat, and a hostage for my obedience...You find it simple...I don't”
― Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“Tis only in the future you can prove your true worth.”
― Baroness Orczy

“...but in every century, and ever since England has been what it is, an Englishman has always felt somewhat ashamed of his own emotion and of his own sympathy.”
― Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“I have so often been asked the question: "But how did you come to think of The Scarlet Pimpernel?" And my answer has always been: "It was God's will that I should." And to you moderns, who perhaps do not believe as I do, I will say, "In the chain of my life, there were so many links, all of which tended towards bringing me to the fulfillment of my destiny.”
― Emmuska Orczy, Links in the Chain of Life

“She, too, had worn a mask in assuming a contempt for him, whilst, as a matter of fact, she completely misunderstood him”
― Emmuska Orczy

“When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness, and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys.”
― Baroness Orczy

“I shall return, doubt it not. Such love as ours was not created to remain unfulfilled. Whatever may happen, believe and trust in me, as I shall in you, and keep the remembrance of me in your heart without sadness and without regret.”
― Baroness Emma Orczy

“It is only in our beautiful France that wholesale slaughter is done lawfully, in the name of liberty and of brotherly love”
― Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“Your conscience troubles you unnecessarily, and you see a deliberate intention in every simple act.”
― Baroness Emma Orczy

“A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate. The hour, some little time before sunset, and the place, the West Barricade, at the very spot where, a decade later, a proud tyrant raised an undying monument to the nation's glory and his own vanity.”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

“Suddenly…a sound…the strangest, undoubtedly, that these lonely cliffs of France had ever heard, broke the silent solemnity of the shore. So strange a sound was it that the gentle breeze ceased to murmur, the tiny pebbles to roll down the steep incline! So strange, that Marguerite, wearied, overwrought as she was, thought that the beneficial unconsciousness of the approach of death was playing her half-sleeping senses a weird and elusive trick. It was the sound of a good, solid, absolutely British “Damn!”
― Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel