Maria Edgeworth Quotes

83 Sourced Quotes

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
Bishop Wilkins prophesied that the time would come when gentlemen, when they were to go on a journey, would call for their wings as regularly as they call for their boots.

Maria Edgeworth
A man who sells his conscience for his interest will sell it for his pleasure. A man who will betray his country will betray his friend.

Maria Edgeworth
Those who are animated by hope can perform what would seem impossibilities to those who are under the depressing influence of fear.

Maria Edgeworth
Hope can produce the finest and most permanent springs of action.

Maria Edgeworth
We are all apt to think that an opinion that differs from our own is a prejudice.

Maria Edgeworth
Come when you're called
And do as you're bid;
Shut the door after you
And you'll never be chid.

Maria Edgeworth
When driven to the necessity of explaining, I found that I did not myself understand what I meant.

Maria Edgeworth
Habit is, to weak minds, a species of moral predestination, from which they have no power to escape.

Maria Edgeworth