Top 50 Marie Corelli Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “What a fool cannot learn he laughs at, thinking that by his laughter he shows superiority instead of latent idiocy.”

— Marie Corelli

2. “I never married because 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 afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night.”

— Marie Corelli

3. “A criminal is twice a criminal when he adds hypocrisy to his crime.”

— Marie Corelli

4. “Such lovely warmth of thought and delicacy of colour are beyond all praise, and equally beyond all thanks!”

— Marie Corelli

5. “How foolish it would be if women did not obey men. The world would be all confusion!”

— Marie Corelli

6. “There is no wealth but love.”

— Marie Corelli

7. “Man, as a purely natural creature, fairly educated, but wholly unspiritualized, is a mental composition of: Hunger, Curiosity, Self-Esteem, Avarice, Cowardice, Lust, Cruelty, Personal Ambition; and on these vile qualities alone our ‘society’ hangs together; the virtues have no place anywhere, and do not count at all, save as conveniently pious metaphors.”

— Marie Corelli

8. “Let me be mad, then, by all means! mad with the madness of Absinthe, the wildest, most luxurious madness in the world! Vive la folie! Vive l’amour! Vive l’animalisme! Vive le Diable!”

— Marie Corelli

9. “An opinion which excites no opposition at all is not worth having!”

— Marie Corelli

10. “And out of heart’s pain comes heart’s peace; and out of desire, accomplishment.”

— Marie Corelli

11. “If we choose to be no more than clods of clay, then we shall be used as clods of day for braver feet to tread on.”

— Marie Corelli

12. “Wealth acts merely as a kind of mirror to show you human nature at its worst.”

— Marie Corelli

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

— Marie Corelli

14. “Years should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or 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!”

— Marie Corelli

15. “The Browning love story? It is an ideal, all too rare, and yet I hardly think it strange. It would have been far stranger had the fates allowed those two brilliant passionate souls to beat themselves out in silence.”

— Marie Corelli

16. “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.”

— Marie Corelli

17. “Nothing gives small minds a better handle for hatred than superiority...”

— Marie Corelli

18. “Love clamors far more incessantly and passionately at a closed gate than an open one!”

— Marie Corelli

19. “Fancy your having no sunshine in London yesterday! Here it was glorious, like full summer, and I sat up with the window wide open, listening to the discourse of two amorous thrushes.”

— Marie Corelli

20. “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.”

— Marie Corelli

21. “You should always be well and bright, for so you do your best work; and you have so much beautiful work to do. The world needs it, and you must give it!”

— Marie Corelli

22. “Greatness is always envied – it is only mediocrity that can boast of a host of friends.”

— Marie Corelli

23. “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.”

— Marie Corelli

24. “What was the use of trying to expound a truth, if the majority preferred a lie?”

— Marie Corelli

25. “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

26. “But a man gifted with original thoughts and the power of expressing them, appears to be regarded by everyone in authority as much worse than the worst criminal, and all the ‘jacks-in-office’ unite to kick him to death if they can.”

— Marie Corelli

27. “I must not say what I truly think, or you will tell me I flatter you-but I can only speak what I feel-and very often I cannot even do that when the feeling is very deep.”

— Marie Corelli

28. “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

29. “A fine morning’s killing, ay! All their necks wrung – all dead birds! Once they could fly – fly and swim! Fly and swim! All dead now – and sold cheap in the open market!”

— Marie Corelli

30. “When one loves God better than the Church is one called a heretic?”

— Marie Corelli

31. “Flowers are like visible messages from God.”

— Marie Corelli

32. “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

33. “The Press nowadays is not a literary press; classic diction and brilliancy of style do not distinguish it by any means.”

— Marie Corelli

34. “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!”

— Marie Corelli

35. “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...”

— Marie Corelli

36. “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.”

— Marie Corelli

37. “Be sure that if you are unhappily celebrated for either beauty, wit, intellect, or all three together, half society wishes you dead already, and the other half tries to make you as wretched as possible while you are alive.”

— Marie Corelli

38. “It is not so difficult to win love as to keep it!”

— Marie Corelli

39. “The hypocrisy and social sham of the world, and that I have mastered the following hard truths of life – that there is no love without lust – no friendship without self-interest – no religion without avarice – and no so-called virtue without its accompanying stronger vice. Who, knowing these things, would care to take part in them!”

— Marie Corelli

40. “Great Poets discover themselves. Little Poets have to be ‘discovered’ by somebody else.”

— Marie Corelli

41. “Well I am glad I have something of the fool in my disposition – foolishness being the only quality that makes wisdom possible.”

— Marie Corelli

42. “My aim throughout is to let facts speak for themselves. If they seem strange, unreal, even impossible, I can only say that the things of the invisible world must always appear so to those whose thoughts and desires are centred on this life only.”

— Marie Corelli

43. “I am not so sure about that,” he returned. “No one is contented in this world, I believe. There is always something left to desire, and the last thing longed for always seems the most necessary to happiness.” “The truest philosophy,” said Heliobas, “is not to long for anything in particular, but to accept everything as it comes, and find out the reason of its coming.”

— Marie Corelli

44. “Dowered with great historic names which they almost despise, they do their best to drag the memory of their ancient lineage into dishonour by vulgar passions, low tastes, and a scorn as well as lack of true intelligence. Let us not talk of them. The English aristocracy was once a magnificent tree, but its broad boughs are fallen, – lopped off and turned into saleable timber, – and there is but a decaying stump of it left.”

— Marie Corelli

45. “Curious that it is impossible for a man to be original without attracting around him a set of unoriginal minds, as though he were a honey-pot and they the flies!”

— Marie Corelli

46. “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

Featured in: Reading Quotes

47. “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?”

— Marie Corelli

Featured in: Strong Quotes

48. “Yet with all the advantages over both friends and enemies which I now possessed I could not honestly say I was happy. I knew I could have every possible enjoyment and amusement the world had to offer – I knew I was one of the most envied among men, and yet, as I stood looking out of the window at the persistently falling rain, I was conscious of a bitterness rather than a sweetness in the full cup of fortune.”

— Marie Corelli

49. “There, the sublime, unreachable mysteries of the Universe are haggled over by poor finite minds who cannot call their lives their own. There, nation wars against nation, creed against creed, soul against soul. Alas, fated planet! how soon shalt thou be extinct, and thy place shall know thee no more!”

— Marie Corelli

50. “Humanity is only capable of worshipping Self – thus, it is necessary, that when people are persuaded to pay honor to an elected Divinity, they should be well and comfortably assured in their own minds that they are but offering homage to an Image of Self placed before them in a deified or heroic form. This satisfies the natural idolatrous cravings of Egotism, and this is all that priests or teachers desire.”

— Marie Corelli