Top 90 Quotes & Sayings by Maria Edgeworth

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

Our Irish blunders are never blunders of the heart.

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

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

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

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

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

Business was his aversion; Pleasure was his business.

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

How success changes the opinion of men!

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

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.

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

wit is often its own worst enemy.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

tyranny and injustice always produce cunning and falsehood.

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

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

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

[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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It sometimes requires courage to fly from danger.

Health can make money, but money cannot make health.

Promises are dangerous things to ask or to give.

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.

... 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.

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.

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

there is no reasoning with imagination.

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.

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

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

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

Confidence is the best proof of love.

Nature knows best, and she says, roar!

Justice satisfies everybody.

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

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

Artificial manners vanish the moment the natural passions are touched.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.