Maria Edgeworth Quotes

Those who are animated by hope can perform what would seem impossibilities to those who are under the depressing influence of fear.

The human heart, at whatever age, opens to the heart that opens in return.

Surely it is much more generous to forgive and remember, than to forgive and forget.

If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.

What a misfortune it isto be bornawoman!? Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show usthenew limits, the Gothic structure, theimpenetrable barriers of our prison.

I find the love of garden grows upon me as I grow older more and more. Shrubs and flowers and such small gay things, that bloom and please and fade and wither and are gone and we care not for them, are refreshing interests, in life, and if we cannot say never fading pleasures, we may say unreproved pleasures and never grieving losses.

Nature knows best, and she says, roar!

In real friendship the judgment, the genius, the prudence of each party become the common property of both.

According to the Asiatics, Cupid's bow is strung with bees which are apt to sting, sometimes fatally, those who meddle with it.

wit is often its own worst enemy.

Persons not habituated to reason often argue absurdly, because, from particular instances, they deduce general conclusions, and extend the result of their limited experience of individuals indiscriminately to whole classes.

Love occupies a vast space in a woman's thoughts, but fills a small portion in a man's life.

A love-match was the only thing for happiness, where the parties could any way afford it.

An orator is the worse person to tell a plain fact.

I've a great fancy to see my own funeral afore I die.

Beauty is a great gift of heaven; not for the purpose of female vanity, but a great gift for one who loves, and wishes to be beloved.

Remember, we can judge better by the conduct of people towards others than by their manner towards ourselves.

Fortune's wheel never stands still the highest point is therefore the most perilous.

half the good intentions of my life have been frustrated by my unfortunate habit of putting things off till to-morrow.

There is no moment like the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards: they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence.

The bore is usually considered a harmless creature, or of that class of irrationa bipeds who hurt only themselves.

when driven to the necessity of explaining, I found that I did not myself understand what I meant.

A man who sells his conscience for his interest will sell it for his pleasure. A man who will betray his country will betray his friend.

Justice satisfies everybody.

Let the sexes mutually forgive each other their follies; or, what is much better, let them combine their talents for their general advantage.

tyranny and injustice always produce cunning and falsehood.

My mother took too much, a great deal too much, care of me; she over-educated, over-instructed, over-dosed me with premature lessons of prudence: she was so afraid that I should ever do a foolish thing, or not say a wise one, that she prompted my every word, and guided my every action. So I grew up, seeing with her eyes, hearing with her ears, and judging with her understanding, till, at length, it was found out that I had not eyes, ears or understanding of my own.

Business was his aversion; Pleasure was his business.

Some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug property.

Confidence is the best proof of love.

It sometimes requires courage to fly from danger.

Promises are dangerous things to ask or to give.

Those who have lived in a house with spoiled children must have a lively recollection of the degree of torment they can inflict upon all who are within sight or hearing.

The unaffected language of real feeling and benevolence is easily understood, and is never ridiculous.

The bore is good for promoting sleep; but though he causeth sleep in others, it is uncertain whether he ever sleeps himself; as few can keep awake in his company long enough to see. It is supposed that when he sleeps it is with his mouth open.

how impossible it is not to laugh in some company, or to laugh in others.

The everlasting quotation-lover dotes on the husks of learning.

Young ladies who think of nothing but dress, public amusements, and forming what they call high connexions, are undoubtedly most easily managed, by the fear of what the world will say of them.

When one illusion vanishes, another shall appear, and, still leading me forward towards an horizon that retreats as I advance, the happy prospect of futurity shall vanish only with my existence.

How is it that hope so powerfully excites, and fear so absolutely depresses all our faculties?

Our pleasures in literature do not, I think, decline with age; last 1st of January was my eighty-second birthday, and I think that I had as much enjoyment from books as I ever had in my life.

there is no reasoning with imagination.

When the mind is full of any one subject, that subject seems to recur with extraordinary frequency - it appears to pursue or to meet us at every turn: in every conversation that we hear in every book we open, in every newspaper we take up, the reigning idea recurs; and then we are surprised, and exclaim at these wonderful coincidences.

Beauties are always curious about beauties, and wits about wits.

Hope can produce the finest and most permanent springs of action.

Health can make money, but money cannot make health.

It is not so easy to do good as those who have never attempted it may imagine.

We perfectly agreed in our ideas of traveling; we hurried from place to place as fast as horses and wheels, and curses and guineas, could carry us.

First loves are not necessarily more foolish than others; but the chances are certainly against them. Proximity of time or place, a variety of accidental circumstances more than the essential merits of the object, often produce what is called first love.

Habit is, to weak minds, a species of moral predestination, from which they have no power to escape.