Daily Inspiration Quote by Ouida

Ouida’s line weaponizes uncertainty as a moral lever. It isn’t just a sentimental plea to be nicer at the train station; it’s a quiet indictment of the way familiarity breeds casualness. The conditional opening, "Could we see", sets up a fantasy of omniscience, then immediately denies it. We can’t know the next meeting, so every goodbye carries a hidden wager: this might be the last time you get to be kind.

The intent is corrective. Ouida is nudging her reader toward a tenderness that doesn’t wait for tragedy to authorize it. The subtext is sharper than it first appears: we ration warmth because we assume continuity. We snap, we hurry, we let minor grievances stand in for final words, because we believe time is a renewable resource. The quote suggests that if we truly felt the fragility of our social bonds, we’d behave as if each parting were consequential.

Context matters. Ouida wrote in a 19th-century world where distance was real and communication was slow; departures weren’t symbolic, they were logistical ruptures. But the line holds up now because modern life manufactures the same blindness in a new key. We have messages, flights, and read receipts, so we act like reunion is guaranteed. Ouida punctures that illusion with a simple, almost domestic turn of phrase: "more tender". Not grander, not more dramatic, just softer, more careful. The power is in how ordinary that demand feels, and how rarely we meet it.