I Will Repay

“Love, the great, the strong, the conquering god --- Love that subdues a world, and rides roughshod over principle, virtue, tradition, over home, kindred, and religion -- what cares he for the easy conquest of the pathetic being, who appeals to his sympathy?Love means equality -- the same height of heroism or of sin. When Love stoops to pity, he has ceased to soar in the boundless space, that rarefied atmosphere wherein man feels himself made at last truly in the image of God.””

— Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

“Is it love to worship a saint in heaven, whom you dare not touch, who hovers above you like a cloud, which floats away from you even as you gaze? To love is to feel one being in the world at one with us, our equal in sin as well as in virtue. To love, for us men, is to clasp one woman with our arms, feeling that she lives and breathes just as we do, suffers as we do, thinks with us, loves with us, and, above all, sins with us. Your mock saint who stands in a niche is not a woman if she have not suffered, still less a woman if she have not sinned. Fall at the feet of your idol an you wish, but drag her down to your level after that- the only level she should ever reach, that of your heart.””

— Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

“To understand is to forgive...””

— Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

“Even the sparrows on the house-tops are objects of suspicion.””

— Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

“They had worshipped Marat for his squalor and his vices; they worshipped Danton for his energy and Robespierre for his calm; they worshipped Déroulède for his voice, his gentleness and his pity, for his care of their children and the eloquence of his speech.””

— Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

“He seemed to love them: to know how to separate the little good that was in them from that hard crust of evil, which misery had put around their hearts.””

— Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy