18th-century Author Quotes

Jane Austen

Lord Byron

Stendhal

Novalis

Walter Scott

Giacomo Casanova

William Wordsworth

He who talks much cannot always talk well.

Now as all the sciences are connected with each other, Philosophy is never completed. In a complete system of all the sciences will philosophy for the first time be made manifest.

A persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.

Five minutes! Zounds! I have been five minutes too late all my life-time!

So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt by fire; So writhes the mind remorse hath riven, Unfit for earth, undoom'd for heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death.

It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts.

The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame, Die fast away: only themselves die faster. The far-fam'd sculptor, and the laurell'd bard, Those bold insurancers of deathless fame, Supply their little feeble aids in vain.

This empire [Russia], vast as it is, is only a prison to which the emperor holds the key.

Marquis de Custine

Enter upon thy paths, O year!
Thy paths, which all who breathe must tread,
Which lead the Living to the Dead,
I enter; for it is my doom
To tread thy labyrinthine gloom;
To note who round me watch and wait;
To love a few; perhaps to hate;
And do all duties of my fate.

No fear of forgetting the good-humoured faces that meet us in our walks each day.

Mary Russell Mitford

Should I perchance still feel after my death, I would no longer have any doubt, but I would most certainly give the lie to anyone asserting before me that I was dead.

Giacomo Casanova

Far as distress the soul can wound
'Tis pain in each degree;
Bliss goes but to a certain bound,
Beyond is agony.

Frances Greville

Cheerfulness, sir, is the principal ingredient in the composition of health.

For parents to restrain the inclinations of their children in marriage is an usurped power.

But what is history, Don Ferrante would often say, without politics? A guide who walks on and on with no one following to learn the road, so that his every step is wasted; just as politics without history is like a man who walks along without a guide.

Alessandro Manzoni

It often happens that the quotations constitute the most valuable part of a book.

In heaven above, And earth below, they best can serve true gladness Who meet most feelingly the calls of sadness.

William Wordsworth

True modesty is a discerning grace
And only blushes in the proper place;
But counterfeit is blind, and skulks through fear,
Where 'tis a shame to be asham'd t' appear:
Humility the parent of the first,
The last by vanity produc'd and nurs'd.

A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself.

The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves — the creature of habits and infirmities.

Isaac D'Israeli

I am persuaded there is no such thing after all as a perfect enjoyment of solitude; for the more delicious the solitude the more one wants a companion.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.

William Shenstone

Art is a misleading, deceptive superstition; in it we think that we have before us the last, innermost essence of humanity itself; and yet, it merely foists upon us a beautiful product of man, in which are set down all of the egotistical, self-satisfying thoughts and emotions which remain sterile and ineffective in the world of action. And I, imbecile, esteem this product more highly than the human being himself, whom God has created.

Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder

It is so seldom that a young fellow has any inclination for the company of an old man...

I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven.

Harriette Wilson