Maria Edgeworth Quotes

83 Sourced Quotes

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
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.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
Artificial manners vanish the moment the natural passions are touched.

Maria Edgeworth
Possessed, as are all the fair daughters of Eve, of an hereditary propensity, transmitted to them undiminished through succeeding generations, to be 'soonmoved withtheslightesttouch of blame'; very little precept and practice will confirm them in the habit, and instruct them all the maxims, of self-justification.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
He found that the spirits can be raised by self-complacency even more agreeably than by burgundy.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,
All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
Half the good intentions of my life have been frustrated by my unfortunate habit of putting things off till to-morrow.

Maria Edgeworth
Sometimes the very faults of parents produce a tendency to opposite virtues in their children.

Maria Edgeworth
The Irish sometimes make and keep a vow against whiskey; these vows are usually limited to a short time.

Maria Edgeworth
We perfectly agreed in our ideas of traveling; we hurried from place to place as fast as horses and wheels, and curses and guineas, could carry us.

Maria Edgeworth
Health can make money, but money cannot make health.

Maria Edgeworth
To our unhappy sex genius and sensibility are the most treacherous gifts of Heaven. Why should we cultivate talents merely to gratify the caprice of tyrants? 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 us the narrow limits, the Gothic structure, the impenetrable barriers of our prison.

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

Maria Edgeworth
Why will friends publish all the trash they can scrape together of celebrated people?

Maria Edgeworth
The bore is good for promoting sleep; but though he causeth sleep in others, it is uncertain whether he ever sleeps himself; as few can keep awake in his company long enough to see. It is supposed that when he sleeps it is with his mouth open.

Maria Edgeworth
Our Irish blunders are never blunders of the heart.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
This startling assertion could not bring his majesty's veracity into question; for according to his definition, and to the received opinion at his court, 'No man could be called drunk, so long as he could lie upon the ground without holding onto it.'

Maria Edgeworth
Illness was a sort of occupation to me, and I was always sorry to get well.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

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

Maria Edgeworth
[He shook] his intended father-in-law's hand with that violence which expresses so much to English feelings.

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth
It was her settled purpose to make the Irish and Ireland ridiculous and contemptible to Lord Colambre; to disgust him with his native country; to make him abandon the wish of residing on his own estate. To confirm him an absentee was her object.

Maria Edgeworth