Maria Edgeworth Quotations

Business was his pleasure; pleasure was his business.

Our Irish blunders are never blunders of the heart.

Come when you're called And do as you're bid; Shut the door after you And you'll never be chid

... an inaccurate use of words produces such a strange confusion in all reasoning, that in the heat of debate, the combatants, unable to distinguish their friends from their foes, fall promiscuously on both.

Home! With what different sensations different people pronounce and hear that word pronounced!

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

Now flattery can never do good; twice cursed in the giving and the receiving, it ought to be.

In marrying, a man does not, to be sure, marry his wife's mother; and yet a prudent man, when he begins to think of the daughter, would look sharp at the mother; ay, and back to the grandmother too, and along the whole female line of ancestry.

Let menot, even inmyownmind, committheinjustice of taking a speck for the whole.

Come when you're called; And do as you're bid; Shut the door after you; And you'll never be chid.

Did the Warwickshire militia, who were chiefly artisans, teach the Irish to drink beer, or did they learn from the Irish how to drink whiskey?

Sir Patrick Rackrent lived and died a monument of old Irish hospitality.

Obtain power, then, by all means; power is the law of man; make it yours.

We cannot judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect accuracy from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters.

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

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

Confidence is the best proof of love.

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

It is unjust and absurd of those advancing in years, to expect of the young that confidence should come all and only on their side: the human heart, at whatever age, opens only to the heart that opens in return.

Alarmed successively by every fashionable medical terror of the day, she dosed her children with every specific which was publicly advertised or privately recommended...The consequence was, that the dangers, which had at first been imaginary, became real: these little victims of domestic medicine never had a day's health: they looked, and were, more dead than alive.

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.

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.

Man is to be held only by the slightest chains; with the idea that he can break them at pleasure, he submits to them in sport.

Possessed, as are all the fair daughters of Eve, of an hereditary propensity, transmitted to them undiminished through succeeding generations, to be 'soonmoved withtheslightesttouch of blame'; very little precept and practice will confirm them in the habit, and instruct them all the maxims, of self-justification.

How success changes the opinion of men!

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.

We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present.

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

Bishop Wilkins prophesied that the time would come when gentlemen, when they were to go on a journey, would call for their wings as regularly as they call for their boots.

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.

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

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.

Artificial manners vanish the moment the natural passions are touched.

Business was his aversion; Pleasure was his business.

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.

Politeness only teaches us to save others from unnecessary pain.... You are not bound by politeness to tell any falsehoods.

Idleness, ennui, noise, mischief, riot, and a nameless train of mistaken notions of pleasure, are often classed, in a young man's mind, under the general head of liberty.

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

Nor elves, nor fays, nor magic charm, Have pow'r, or will, to work us harm; For those who dare the truth to tell, Fays, elves, and fairies, wish them well.

It sometimes requires courage to fly from danger.

Nature knows best, and she says, roar!

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.

There are two sorts of content; one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence. The first is a virtue; the other, a vice.

The labor of thinking was so great to me, that having once come to a conclusion upon any subject, I would rather persist in it, right or wrong, than be at the trouble of going over the process again to revise and rectify my judgment.

Illness was a sort of occupation to me, and I was always sorry to get well.

there is no reasoning with imagination.

tyranny and injustice always produce cunning and falsehood.

Justice satisfies everybody.

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

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.

a straight line is the shortest possible line between any two points - an axiom equally true in morals as in mathematics.

We are all apt to think that an opinion that differs from our own is a prejudice ...

every man who takes a part in politics, especially in times when parties run high, must expect to be abused; they must bear it; and their friends must learn to bear it for them.

I ... practiced all the arts of apology, evasion, and invisibility, to which procrastinators must sooner or later be reduced.

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

Promises are dangerous things to ask or to give.

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

[On collectors of quotations:] How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets ...

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.

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

Health can make money, but money cannot make health.

why will friends publish all the trash they can scrape together of celebrated people?

Nature's hasty conscience.

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.

Books only spoil the originality of genius. Very well for those who can't think for themselves - But when one has made up one's opinions, there is no use in reading.

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.

It is quite fitting that charity should begin at home ... but then it should not end at home; for those that help nobody will find none to help them in time of need.

sometimes the very faults of parents produce a tendency to opposite virtues in their children.

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.

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

No man ever distinguished himself who could not bear to be laughed at.

The Irish sometimes make and keep a vow against whiskey; these vows are usually limited to a short time.

you've always been living on prospects; for my part, I'd rather have a mole-hill in possession than a mountain in prospect.

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.

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

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

wit is often its own worst enemy.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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 only to the heart that opens in return.

And all the young ladies said that a love-match was the only thing for happiness, where the parties could anyway afford it.

The law, in our case, seems to make the right; and the very reverse ought to be done - the right should make the law.