Daily Inspiration Quote by Ouida

Familiarity, in Ouida's hands, isn’t cozy; it’s corrosive. The line turns the old proverb about familiarity breeding contempt into something sharper and more visual: a stage magician whose trick depends on repetition. Beauty thrives on distance and a little mystery; once you see the seams - the effort, the vanity, the maintenance, the ordinary compromises - the illusion collapses. Ugliness, though, benefits from the same trick. What repels at first can soften into texture, even charm, when it becomes part of the room’s background noise. Habit, not virtue, does the transforming.

The cruelty here is social as much as romantic. In late-Victorian culture, beauty was currency and performance, especially for women: admired, scrutinized, and eventually punished for being real. Ouida, a novelist steeped in melodrama and high style, understood how quickly adoration curdles when the admired person is no longer an image but a presence with needs. Familiarity demotes the beautiful from spectacle to neighbor; it also allows society to forgive the unbeautiful by granting them narrative - a personality, a history, a usefulness.

The subtext lands as a warning: if your power is aesthetic, time and proximity are not your allies. It’s also a quiet indictment of the viewer. The “magician” isn’t beauty itself; it’s our attention, fickle and lazy, always looking for novelty. Ouida makes that laziness sound like a moral failure.