Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach - Aphorisms

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You stay young as long as you can learn, acquire new habits and suffer contradiction.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
We usually learn to wait only when we have no longer anything to wait for.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Those who trusted at the wrong time and place will in turn mistrust at the wrong time and place.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
The world belongs to those who possess it, and is scorned by those to whom it should belong.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
The mediocre always feel as if they're fighting for their lives when confronted by the excellent.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
The believer who has never doubted will hardly convert a doubter.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
How happy are the pessimists! What joy is theirs when they have proved there is no joy.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
There are times when to be reasonable is to be cowardly.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Our greatest indulgence towards a man springs from our despair of him.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
One should be selfish enough to be selfless up to a certain point.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Many think they have good hearts who have only weak nerves.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
The vain and weak see a judge in everyone; the proud and strong know no judge other than themselves.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Like body and soul theory and practice are one, and like body and soul they are for the most part at loggerheads.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Never expect women to be sincere so long as they are educated to think that their first aim in life is to please.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
One of the main goals of self-education is to eradicate that vanity in us without which we would never have been educated.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
None are so eager to gain new experience as those who don't know how to make use of the old ones.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
With our parents we bury our past, with our children our future.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
The world would be in better shape if people would take the same pains in the practice of the simplest moral laws as they exert in intellectualizing over the most subtle moral questions.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Hobbies protect us from passions. One hobby becomes a passion.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Only those few people who practice it believe in goodness.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Dilettantes have not achieved anything lasting even in the applied arts. But they have rendered some service to the highest of all disciplines: philosophy. Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues are proof of this.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
There are intellects that shine and there are those that sparkle. The former illuminate matters, the latter obscure them.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Wishes which cannot be fulfilled are said to be "pious." It is assumed, apparently, that only profane wishes are fulfilled.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
The sacrifice which is seemingly most unnecessary and most foolish is still nearer to absolute wisdom than the cleverest action of so-called legitimate egocentricity.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
An understanding of beauty and enthusiasm for it are one and the same.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Indifference of every kind is reprehensible, even indifference towards one's self.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
I regret nothing, says arrogance; I will regret nothing, says inexperience.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
An apparent contradiction of a natural law is only the rarely occurring proof of another natural law.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Nothing is so often and so irrevocably missed as the opportunity which crops up daily.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach