Franz Grillparzer Quotes

I look around me and nowhere do I see a stamp of disapproval with which nature marked a woman's candid brow.

Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun.

The uneducated person perceives only the individual phenomenon, the partly educated person the rule, and the educated person the exception.

History is the zoology of the human race.

I love the pride whose measure is its own eminence and not the insignificance of someone else.

The way in which modern German poetry follows theories reminds me of pupils who, scolded by their teacher for their insubordination, justify themselves by saying that they invented new rules of propriety according to which they are quite well- behaved.

The character of the crowds is made up of mimicry and hostility.

Drink and be thankful to the host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need it.

Someone who is reluctant to say what he needs to say, often ends up doing so with an insolence whose crassness is proportionate tohis fear, once he gathers the necessary courage.

To test a modest man's modesty do not investigate if he ignores applause, find out if he abides criticism.

Once you have looked at the land from atop the Kahlenberg, you will understand what I write and who I am.

Isn't it awful that cold feet make for a cold imagination and that a pair of woollen socks induce good thoughts!

A woman's passion is not the measure of a man's love.

Piety is the fermentation of the forming mind and the putrefaction of the disintegrating one.

You even called me stupid in your verse, and I'm almost agreeing, for where stupidity is involved, you are quite an expert, friend.

Without a notion of the transcendental, human beings would, indeed, be animals; however, only fools can be convinced of it, and only degenerates need such a conviction.

To declaim freedom verses seems like a poem within a poem; freedom requires guns, it requires arms, but no feet.

No shortcomings of other people cause us to be more intolerant than those which are caricatures of our own.

German radicalism: freedom-masturbation.

Plato calls complacency the companion of loneliness.

Moons and years pass by and are gone forever, but a beautiful moment shimmers through life a ray of light.

Why do villains have so much influence? Because the honest people are terribly dense.

As youth lives in the future, so the adult lives in the past: No one rightly knows how to live in the present.

A heart that overflows may seek out merrymaking and boisterous festivities to quietly rejoice, unnoticed amidst the reveling crowds.

Freedom requires guns.

Love wants to be confirmed with concrete symbols, but recklessness loves instability.

Just as the queen bee, the highest-ranking, peerless creature of her hive, is surrounded by lowly drones to please her, whereas the workers produce honey, the same way is the one who sits on the throne an equal only to himself, and no one's companion.

This searching and doubting and vacillating where nothing is clear but the arrogance of quest. I, too, had such noble ideas when I was still a boy.

Ideas are not thoughts; the thought respects the boundaries that the idea ignores thereby failing to realize itself.

A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he candivide.

In order to succeed in a profession, a person not only needs to have its good, but also its bad qualities. The former are the spirit, the latter is the body of the job.

The main reason why men and women make different aesthetic judgments is the fact that the latter, generally incapable of abstraction, only admire what meets their complete approval.

Boundless in your charity, but shrewd and cautious as a lender, you delight all those today whom you made beggars the day before.

Mankind is getting smarter every day. Actually, it only seems so. At least we are making progress. We're progressing, to be sure, ever more deeply into the forest.

Before passing different laws for different people, I'd relinquish myself unto you as your slave.

Jealousy is a grievous passion that jealously seeks what causes grief.

The military and the clergy cause us much annoyance; the clergy and the military, they empty our wallets and rob our intelligence.

Morality, a muzzle for the will; logic, a climbing iron for the mind.

A wise man can and should stand above his times, not so the poet, but he should be their apex.

I am a woman, and even if I could proceed with harshness and rigidity, it would disgust me nonetheless.

Science and art, or by the same token, poetry and prose differ from one another like a journey and an excursion. The purpose of the journey is its goal, the purpose of an excursion is the process.

If we notice a few errors in the work of a proven master, we may and even will often be correct; if we believe, however, that he is completely and utterly mistaken, we are in danger of missing his entire concept.

Do old people always live in the past? What yesterday was firm and true, may not be so today.

The cradle of the future is the grave of the past.

Captivating the spirit of the age is a matter of great talent; being swept away by it characterizes an average mind. The two are as different from one another as activity and passivity.

Why does the past look so enticing to us? For the same reason why from a distance a meadow with flowers looks like a flower bed.

Poetry, it is often said and loudly so, is life's true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work of literature looks in vain for Socrates.

When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet's task to turn it into an audience.

What are the characteristics of today's world so that one may recognize it by them?" It pays pensions and borrows money: credit and monuments.

Even with limited intelligence, knowing oneself is not as difficult as some say, but to act according to what one has realized about oneself in real life is as difficult as practicing anything else, compared to theory.