Quotes from Maria Edgeworth

An orator is the worse person to tell a plain fact.

If we take care of the moments the years will take care of themselves.

The bore is usually considered a harmless creature, or of that class of irrationa bipeds who hurt only themselves.

Our Irish blunders are never blunders of the heart.

Some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug property.

The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards; they will be dissipated, lost and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence.

Artificial manners vanish the moment the natural passions are touched.

Well! some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug PROPERTY.

How success changes the opinion of men!

The law, in our case, seems to make the right; and the very reverse ought to be done - the right should make the law.

Surely it is much more generous to forgive and remember, than to forgive and forget.

Some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug property.

There is no moment like the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards: they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence.

The bore is usually considered a harmless creature, or of that class of irrational bipeds who hurt only themselves.

The human heart, at whatever age, opens only to the heart that opens in return.

It is curious to observe how customs and ceremonies degenerate.

Man is to be held only by the slightest chains; with the idea that he can break them at pleasure, he submits to them in sport.

It has been somewhere said by Johnson, that merely to invent a story is no small effort of the human understanding.

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.

CASTLE RACKRENT Monday Morning.[A]

Above a patron—though I condescend   Sometimes to call a minister my friend.

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. But when the tide of passion had swept away the landmarks, he had no method of ascertaining the boundaries of right and wrong.

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.

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