Franz Grillparzer Quotes

Reason and the ability to use it are two separate skills.

A person who looks different all the time frightens me. Only one animal changes its skin: the snake.

Is it true that one travels in order to know mankind? It is easier to get to know other people at home, but abroad one gets to know oneself.

No matter which word it is, when I pronounce repeatedly, it ends up sounding utterly ridiculous and meaningless to me.

Progress will always have as its recourse to exaggerate what it cannot surpass.

Human life, old and young, takes place between hope and remembrance. The young man sees all the gates to his desires open, and the old man remembers--his hopes.

Woman is the crown of all creation, but Man is the head who wears it, and even the servant is master in his house.

A love that dies has never lived.

Feeling and thinking are actually the blind man who carries the lame.

Since love is folly, a foolish woman is more dangerous than a wise one.

Critics are reprimanded when they get sarcastic. How absurd! Is the torch of criticism supposed to shine without burning?

The likeness of the world? A shadow! And world's glory? A dream!

The most irascible person is most likely to become apathetic in dangerous situations.

I would love to be able to write a tragedy in my imagination--it would turn into a masterpiece.

Mozart starved, but you allow Thalberg and Liszt make tons of gold: Of course, you may think that someone immortal cannot die of hunger

The Germans believe that, no matter where, they can get by on knowledge alone. Art, however, requires skill.

Who could deny that our Austria is richer than any other country? As the saying goes: "We have money like manure.

Let no one say that taking action is hard. Action is aided by courage, by the moment, by impulse, and the hardest thing in the world is making a decision.

The courts used to be, fair and square, the avengers of secular crimes; but nowadays they demand respect even for the criminal.

Gold schenkt die Eitelkeit, der rauhe Stolz, Die Freundschaft und die Liebe schenken Blumen. Gold is the gift of vanityand pride, Friendship and love offer flowers.

Man lives two lives, woe, were it otherwise! One is seized by death, the other one, his honor, remains.

Gold is the gift of vanity and common pride, but flowers are the gift of love and friendship.

In Germany, a certain artistic sense is fairly common, but the artist's sense is foreign there.

In early times, before the floods swept across the world, there was life, albeit odd, as one can see from the fossils of mammoth bones, and there was the regime of Prince Metternich.

Schiller moves upward. Goethe comes from up above.

Right and proof are two crutches for everything bent and crooked that limps along.

A cure by regression is homeopathic, like healing the damage done by ministers and ignorance with stupidity and Jesuits.

A pious woman's neighbor, a philanthropist's child, a liberal's servant--these three have a hard life.

Distinctly different as a child, as an adolescent, in his prime and in his old age, man considers himself as one, not because he acts, but because he knows.

Lap-dogs and blood-hounds enjoy the greatest respect at court; house-dogs and no dogs at all are not even considered.

Never expect any recognition here--the system prohibits it. The cross is not affixed to the genius, no, the genius is affixed to the cross.

You ardently strive for freedom, and I do wish you were free--but, rather than for your sake, so that government won't be.

Robespierre, this pedant of freedom!

The sun of a prince's good graces resembles that in the skies in that it shines most kindly upon the blackest people.

Those whom the gods chose as their property must not consort with mortals.

The noble woman is half a man, even a complete one. Only their imperfections make them women.

The verdict on Prince Metternich will soon be out: An excellent diplomat and a bad politician.

How great seems human progress when we consider where it began, and how insignificant, when we contemplate the goals for which itstrives.

No one will stop to help you when you are in need, but everyone forces opinions upon you that you do not require.

Soon there will be nothing truly profound that is not achieved by everyone, and of the difficult things in this world only one will be left: simplicity.

Trying to conceal a crime is like burying a seed in the ground.

Disregard for the consequences and for right and wrong nowadays passes as energy.

Es binden Sklavenfesseln nur die H a« nde, Der Sinn, er macht den Freien und den Knecht. The chains of slavery can only bind the hands. The mind makes us either free or enslaved.

The graceful flowers of innocence are more valuable than the laurel crown of fame.

I know how ingratitude burns, how falsehood tortures, for I have been deceived in friendship and in love; I have learned to lose and to resign myself.

Do you think that it is possible to have a mere taste of commonness? Either one hates it or makes common cause with it.

Our age believed herself pregnant with auspicious progeny, but when her hour came, it turned out to be dropsy.

Pity, but never love bestows kind words upon the slave.

He who takes people for smart pays an expensive lesson.

I notice well that one stray step from the habitual path leads irresistibly into a new direction. Life moves forward, it never reverses its course.