Quotes from Franz Grillparzer

Dilettantes appreciate the work, professors the master at the same time.

The office of the prince and that of the writer are defined and assigned as follows: the nobleman gives rank to the written work,the writer provides food for the prince.

In Germany, a certain artistic sense is fairly common, but the artist's sense is foreign there.

A flutist who is moved to tears by his own performance will soon make the listeners laugh because of the sounds that he produces.

As far as the arts and the sciences are concerned, the German mind appreciates most highly that which it does not understand of the latter, and that which it does not enjoy of the former.

Art compares to nature like wine to the grape.

Bunglers and pedants judge art according to genre; they approve of this and dismiss that genre, but instead of genres, the open-minded connoisseur appreciates only individual works.

The art of acting presupposes three phases: understanding a part, intuiting a part, and contemplating the essence of a part.

In the arts, foolhardiness is always harmful; even worse, however, is clumsiness.

You even called me stupid in your verse, and I'm almost agreeing, for where stupidity is involved, you are quite an expert, friend.

You can make the best of it and be content, or you can complain, it makes no difference. What does it matter that human beings judge the things that exist?

Let no one say that taking action is hard. Action is aided by courage, by the moment, by impulse, and the hardest thing in the world is making a decision.

Uneducated people are unfortunate in that they do grasp complex issues, educated people, on the other hand, often do not understand simplicity, which is a far greater misfortune.

Those whom the gods chose as their property must not consort with mortals.

Someone who is reluctant to say what he needs to say, often ends up doing so with an insolence whose crassness is proportionate tohis fear, once he gathers the necessary courage.

To declaim freedom verses seems like a poem within a poem; freedom requires guns, it requires arms, but no feet.

German radicalism: freedom-masturbation.

Freedom requires guns.

The cradle of the future is the grave of the past.