Maria Edgeworth Quotes

83 Sourced Quotes

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
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.

Maria Edgeworth
What a misfortune it is to be born a woman!…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 new limits, the Gothic structure, the impenetrable barriers of our prison.

Maria Edgeworth
Now flattery can never do good; twice cursed in the giving and the receiving, it ought to be.

Maria Edgeworth
You've always been living on prospects; for my part, I'd rather have a mole-hill in possession than a mountain in prospect.

Maria Edgeworth
Tyranny and injustice always produce cunning and falsehood.

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

Maria Edgeworth
How impossible it is not to laugh in some company, or to laugh in others.

Maria Edgeworth
A straight line is the shortest possible line between any two points — an axiom equally true in morals as in mathematics.

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

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

Maria Edgeworth
'Twas doing nothing was his curse; —
Is there a vice can plague us worse?
The wretch who digs the mine for bread,
Or ploughs, that others may be fed,
Feels less fatigue than that decreed
To him who cannot think or read.

Maria Edgeworth
Home! With what different sensations different people pronounce and hear that word pronounced!

Maria Edgeworth
It is little consolation, and no compensation, to the person who is hurt that the offender pleads he did not mean to say or do any thing rude. A rude thing is a rude thing—the intention is nothing—all we are to judge of is the fact.

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

Maria Edgeworth
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.

Maria Edgeworth