Maria Edgeworth Quotes

83 Sourced Quotes

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.

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

Maria Edgeworth
Well! some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug property.

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

Maria Edgeworth
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.

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

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

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
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?

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
An orator is the worst person to tell a plain fact...

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

Maria Edgeworth
It is safer to judge of people by their conduct to others than by their manners towards ourselves.

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

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

Maria Edgeworth
A love-match was the only thing for happiness, where the parties could any way afford it.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

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

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

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

Maria Edgeworth
The law, in our case, seems to make the right, and the very reverse ought to be done — the right should make the law.

Maria Edgeworth
Love occupies a vast space in a woman's thoughts, but fills a small portion in a man's life.

Maria Edgeworth
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 afterward. They will be dissipated, lost in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence.

Maria Edgeworth
If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth