Maria Edgeworth > Quotes

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

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

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

“What a treasure, to meet with any thing a new heart-- all hearts, nowadays, are secondhand at best.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Belinda

“Besides the bore condescending, who, whether good-natured or ill-natured, is a most provoking animal—there is the bore facetious, an insufferable creature, always laughing, but with whom you can never laugh. And there is another exotic variety—the vive la bagatelle bore of the ape kind—who imitate men of genius. Having early been taught that there is nothing more delightful than the unbending of a great mind, they set about continually to unbend the bow in company.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Thoughts on Bores: 'Wit is often its own worst enemy''

“At ebb time—a time which must come to all, pretty or rich, treasures are discovered upon some shores; or golden sands are seen when the waters run low. In others bare rocks, slime, or reptiles. May I never be at low tide with a bore!”
― Maria Edgeworth, Thoughts on Bores: 'Wit is often its own worst enemy''

“Some ladies had them for favourites or pets; but they were found mischievous and dangerous. Their morality was easy,—but difficult to understand; compounded of three-fourths sentiment—nine-tenths selfishness, twelve-ninths instinct, self-devotion, metaphysics, and cant. ‘Twas hard to come at a common denominator. John Bull, with his four rules of vulgar arithmetic, could never make it out; altogether he never could abide these foreign bores. Thought ‘em confounded dull too—Civilly told them so, and half asleep bid them “prythee begone”
― Maria Edgeworth, Thoughts on Bores: 'Wit is often its own worst enemy''

“But don't you know that girls never think of what they are talking about, or rather never talk of what they are thinking about? And they have always ten times more to say to the man they don't care for, than to him they do.”
― Maria Edgeworth

“So quickly in youth do different and opposite trains of ideas and emotions succeed to each other; and so easy it is, by a timely exercise of reason and self-command, to prevent a fancy from becoming a passion.”
― Maria Edgeworth

“When people are warm, they cannot stand picking terms.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Helen

“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, Castle Rackrent

“When a man's over head and shoulders in debt, he may live the faster for it, and the better if he goes the right way about it, or else how is it so many live so well, as we see every day after they are ruined?”
― Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent

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

“Clarence Hervey might have been more than a pleasant young man, if he had not been smitten with the desire of being thought superior in every thing, and of being the most admired person in all companies. He had been early flattered with the idea that he was a man of genius; and he imagined that, as such, he was entitled to be imprudent, wild, and eccentric. He affected singularity, in order to establish his claims to genius. He had considerable literary talents, by which he was distinguished at Oxford; but he was so dreadfully afraid of passing for a pedant, that when he came into the company of the idle and the ignorant, he pretended to disdain every species of knowledge. His chameleon character seemed to vary in different lights, and according to the different situations in which he happened to be placed. He could be all things to all men—and to all women.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Belinda

“I wish," said the old lady, "for her own sake, for the sake of her family, and for the sake of her reputation, that my lady Delacour had fewer admirers, and more friends."

"Women, who have met with so many admirers, seldom meet with many friends," said lady Anne.

"No," said Mrs. Delacour, "for they seldom are wise enough to know their value."

"We learn the value of all things, but especially of friends, by experience," said lady Anne, "and it is no wonder, therefore, that those who have little experience of the pleasures of friendship should not be wise enough to know their value.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Belinda

“It is sometimes fortunate, that the means which are taken to produce certain effects upon the mind have a tendency directly opposite to what is expected.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Belinda

“The common female blue is indeed intolerable as a wife—opinionative and opinionated; and her opinion always is that her husband is wrong. John certainly has a rooted aversion to this whole class. There is the deep blue and the light; the light blues not esteemed—not admitted at Almacks. The deep-dyed in the nine times dyed blue—is that with which no man dares contend. The blue chatterer is seen and heard every where; it no man will attempt to silence by throwing the handkerchief.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Thoughts on Bores: 'Wit is often its own worst enemy''

“The prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics, who aspire to the character of superior wisdom: but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestible proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their labors!”
― Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent

“Make it a rule, you know, to believe only half the world says.”
― Maria Edgeworth, The Absentee

“First loves are not necessarily more foolish than others; but 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. From poetry or romance, young people usually form their early ideas of love before they have actually felt the passion; and the image they have in their own minds of the beau ideal is cast upon the first object they afterward behold. This, if I may be allowed the expression is Cupid's Fata Morgana. Deluded mortals are in ecstasy whilst the illusion lasts, and in despair when it vanishes.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Belinda

“My dear, you will be woefully disappointed if in my story you expect any thing like a novel. I once heard a general say, that nothing was less like a review than a battle; and I can tell you that nothing is more unlike a novel than real life. Of all lives, mine has been the least romantic.”
― Maria Edgeworth, The Maria Edgeworth Collection

“Women are now so highly cultivated, and political subjects are at present of so much importance, of such high interest, to all human creatures who live together in society, you can hardly expect, Helen, that you, as a rational being, can go through the world as it is now, without forming any opinion on points of public importance. You cannot, I conceive, satisfy yourself with the common namby-pamby little missy phrase, “ladies have nothing to do with politics.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Helen

“[Wigs were formerly used instead of brooms in Ireland for sweeping or dusting tables, stairs, etc. The Editor doubted the fact till he saw a labourer of the old school sweep down a flight of stairs with his wig; he afterwards put it on his head again with the utmost composure, and said, ‘Oh, please your honour, it’s never a bit the worse.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

“After having all expressed their opinions, without making any impression upon one another, they retired to rest.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Belinda

“It has been somewhere said by Johnson, that merely to invent a story is no small effort of the human understanding.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Tales and Novels — Volume 01 Moral Tales

“What a misfortune it is to be born a woman! In vain, dear Leonora, would you reconcile me to my doom. Condemned to incessant hypocrisy, or everlasting misery, woman is the slave or the outcast of society. Confidence in our fellow-creatures, or in ourselves, alike forbidden us, to what purpose have we understandings, which we may not use? hearts, which we may not trust? 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, Leonora

“Though he had determined upon this in the first moment of joyful enthusiasm, yet the delay of four-and-twenty hours had made a material change in his feelings; his most virtuous resolves were always rather the effect of sudden impulse than of steady principle.”
― Maria Edgeworth, Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

“Of Lord Byron I can tell you only that his appearance is nothing that you would remark.”
― Maria Edgeworth, The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth

“Formerly, a few families had set the fashion. From time immemorial everything had, in Dublin, been submitted to their hereditary authority; and conversation, though it had been rendered polite by their example, was, at the same time, limited within narrow bounds. Young people, educated upon a more enlarged plan, in time grew up; and, no authority or fashion forbidding it, necessarily rose to their just place, and enjoyed their due influence in society. The want of manners, joined to the want of knowledge in the new set, created universal disgust: they were compelled, some by ridicule, some by bankruptcies, to fall back into their former places, from which they could never more emerge. In the meantime, some of the Irish nobility and gentry who had been living at an unusual expense in London—an expense beyond their incomes— were glad to return home to refit; and they brought with them a new stock of ideas, and some taste for science and literature, which, within these latter years, have become fashionable, indeed indispensable, in London. That part of the Irish aristocracy, who, immediately upon the first incursions of the vulgarians, had fled in despair to their fastnesses in the country, hearing of the improvements which had gradually taken place in society, and assured of the final expulsion of the barbarians, ventured from their retreats, and returned to their posts in town. So that now,' concluded Sir James, 'you find a society in Dublin composed of a most agreeable and salutary mixture of birth and education, gentility and knowledge, manner and matter; and you see pervading the whole new life and energy, new talent, new ambition, a desire and a determination to improve and be improved—a perception that higher distinction can now be obtained in almost all company, by genius and merit, than by airs and dress.”
― Maria Edgeworth, The Absentee

“It is not, by any means, that I am more of a prude than is becoming, my lady; nor, that I take upon me to be so innocent, as not to know, that young gentlemen of fortune will, if it be only for fashion's sake, have such things as kept mistresses (begging pardon for mentioning such trash).”
― Maria Edgeworth, Belinda