Top 80 Quotes & Sayings by Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Irish novelist Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington.
Last updated on September 12, 2024.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, was an Irish novelist, journalist, and literary hostess. She became acquainted with Lord Byron in Genoa and wrote a book about her conversations with him.

Women excel more in literary judgment than in literary production,--they are better critics than authors.
Love in France is a comedy; in England a tragedy; in Italy an opera seria; and in Germany a melodrama.
Reason dissipates the illusions of life, but does not console us for their departure. — © Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
Reason dissipates the illusions of life, but does not console us for their departure.
The future: A consolation for those who have no other.
Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our buried hopes.
Society punishes not the vices of its members, but their detection.
There is no magician like love.
A mother's love! O holy, boundless thing! Fountain whose waters never cease to spring!
Flowers are the bright remembrances of youth; they waft us back, with their bland odorous breath, the joyous hours that only young life knows, ere we have learnt that this fair earth hides graves.
Mountains appear more lofty the nearer they are approached, but great men resemble them not in this particular.
Mediocrity is beneath a brave soul.
A profound knowledge of life is the least enviable of all species of knowledge, because it can only be acquired by trials that make us regret the loss of our ignorance.
Friends are the thermometer by which we may judge the temperature of our fortunes. — © Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
Friends are the thermometer by which we may judge the temperature of our fortunes.
Love and enthusiasm are always ridiculous, when not reciprocated by their objects.
He who would remain honest ought to keep away want.
Some people are capable of making great sacrifices, but few are capable of concealing how much the effort has cost them; and it is this concealment that constitutes their value.
Religion converts despair, which destroys, into resignation, which submits.
A German writer observes: "The noblest characters only show themselves in their real light. All others act comedy with their fellow-men even unto the grave.
Sure there's different roads from this to Dungarvan* - some thinks one road pleasanter, and some think another; wouldn't it be mighty foolish to quarrel for this? - and sure isn't it twice worse to thry to interfere with people for choosing the road they like best to heaven?
Men are capable of making great sacrifices, who are not willing to make the lesser ones, on which so much of the happiness of life depends. The great sacrifices are seldom called for, but the minor ones are in daily requisition; and the making them with cheerfulness and grace enhances their value.
... I never will allow myself to form an ideal of any person I desire to see, for disappointment never fails to ensue.
Listeners beware, for ye are doomed never to hear good of yourselves.
There are no persons capable of stooping so low as those who desire to rise in the world.
Our weaknesses are the indigenous produce of our characters; but our strength is the forced fruit.
Praise is the only gift for which people are really grateful.
Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower.
People are always willing to follow advice when it accords with their own wishes.
Wit is the lightning of the mind, reason the sunshine, and reflection the moonlight.
When the sun shines on you, you see your friends. It requires sunshine to be seen by them to advantage!
Modern historians are all would-be philosophers; who, instead of relating facts as they occurred, give us their version, or rather perversions of them, always colored by their political prejudices, or distorted to establish some theory . . .
Satire, like conscience, reminds us of what we often wish to forget.
The most certain mode of making people content with us is to make them content with themselves.
Those who are formed to win general admiration are seldom calculated to bestow individual happiness.
Grief is, of all the passions, the one that is the most ingenious and indefatigable in finding food for its own subsistence.
Spring is the season of hope, and autumn is that of memory.
He who fears not, is to be feared.
There is no knowledge for which so great a price is paid as a knowledge of the world; and no one ever became an adept in it except at the expense of a hardened or a wounded heart.
Imagination, which is the Eldorado of the poet and of the novel-writer, often proves the most pernicious gift to the individuals who compose the talkers instead of the writers in society.
Tears fell from my eyes - yes, weak and foolish as it now appears to me, I wept for my departed youth; and for that beauty of which the faithful mirror too plainly assured me, no remnant existed.
When we find that we are not liked, we assert that we are not understood; when probably the dislike we have excited proceeds from our being too fully comprehended.
People seem to lose all respect for the past; events succeed each other with such velocity that the most remarkable one of a few years gone by, is no more remembered than if centuries had closed over it.
Only vain people wage war against the vanity of others.
We have a reading, a talking, and a writing public. When shall we have a thinking?
The difference between weakness and wickedness is much less than people suppose; and the consequences are nearly always the same.
There is no cosmetic like happiness
[His mind] was like a volcano, full of fire and wealth, sometimes calm, often dazzling and playful, but ever threatening. It ran swift as the lightning from one subject to another, and occasionally burst forth in passionate throes of intellect, nearly allied to madness.
A woman's head is always influenced by her heart, but a man's heart is always influenced by his head. — © Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
A woman's head is always influenced by her heart, but a man's heart is always influenced by his head.
Flattery, if judiciously administered, is always acceptable.
To appear rich, we become poor.
Society seldom forgives those who have discovered the emptiness of its pleasures, and who can live independent of it and them.
Love matches are made by people who are content, for a month of honey, to condemn themselves to a life of vinegar.
Wit lives in the present, but genius survives the future.
One of the most marked characteristics of our day is a reckless neglect of principles, and a rigid adherence to their semblance.
alas! there is no casting anchor in the stream of time!
Conversation is the legs on which thought walks; and writing, the wings by which it flies.
Genius is the gold in the mine, talent is the miner who works and brings it out.
We never respect those who amuse us, however we may smile at their comic powers
Happiness is a rare plant that seldom takes root on earth-few ever enjoyed it, except for a brief period; the search after it is rarely rewarded by the discovery, but there is an admirable substitute for it... a contented spirit.
We are more prone to murmur at the punishment of our faults than to lament them.
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