Franz Grillparzer
Once you have looked at the land from atop the Kahlenberg, you will understand what I write and who I am.Collection: Writing
Profundity easily turns into dullness and astuteness deteriorates into wit. Be guided by natural common sense and it will accommodate great and small.Collection: Common Sense
In early times, before the floods swept across the world, there was life, albeit odd, as one can see from the fossils of mammoth bones, and there was the regime of Prince Metternich.Collection: World
Strength, strength alone, is honorable, the German nation clamors in its majesty. But since it is hard to muster strength so suddenly, they have to make do with boorishness.Collection: Strength
Schiller moves upward. Goethe comes from up above.Collection: Moving
To enlist the support of the people and of parliament, you only have to propose a profitable villainy.Collection: People
Man will return to his origins. Goethe has finally become as squiggly as the city of his fathers.Collection: Father
Finally and long overdue, your people, oppressed and disgraced by hatred and maliciousness, have achieved justice: now you enjoy full citizen's rights, but you'll remain Jews nonetheless.Collection: Rights
Historical! Must it be historical to catch your attention? Even though historicity, like notoriety, denotes nothing more than thatsomething has occurred.Collection: History
Man lives two lives, woe, were it otherwise! One is seized by death, the other one, his honor, remains.Collection: Life
Who claims that the heathen's view of the world is incorrect? Life gives you nothing! It is ruled by false gods! Nothing remains true to you but your own self; provided you remain true to it.Collection: Life
How frightening it is to have reached the height of human accomplishment in art that must forever borrow from life's abundance.Collection: Life
I am a woman, and even if I could proceed with harshness and rigidity, it would disgust me nonetheless.Collection: Women
Those whom the gods chose as their property must not consort with mortals.Collection: Loneliness
The present is never poetic as it serves necessity, necessity, however, is prosaic.Collection: Poetry
The manifestation of poetry in external life is formal perfection. True sentiment grows within, and art must represent internal phenomena externally.Collection: Life
Prose and poetry are as different as food and drink.Collection: Food
My anger thought you too ignoble for my love, and close examination finds you too magnificent, and only equals are joined together smoothly.Collection: Anger
The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Art
Art compares to nature like wine to the grape.Collection: Art
The art of acting presupposes three phases: understanding a part, intuiting a part, and contemplating the essence of a part.Collection: Art
In Germany, a certain artistic sense is fairly common, but the artist's sense is foreign there.Collection: Art
Swear words and profanities are mere abbreviations of speech, similar to the abbreviations in writing.Collection: Writing
You say I'm small? I certainly can relate, although it is a matter of perspective. The distance is deceptive, my friend, you standtoo low.Collection: Distance
Lap-dogs and blood-hounds enjoy the greatest respect at court; house-dogs and no dogs at all are not even considered.Collection: Respect
Let the famous not denounce fame. Far from being empty and meaningless, it fills those it touches with divine power.Collection: Divine Power
A man may welcome his beloved with circumstance, but a woman's love and her concern for his well-being are discreet.Collection: Love
What raises great poetry above all else--it is the entire person and also the entire world.Collection: Character
Gold schenkt die Eitelkeit, der rauhe Stolz, Die Freundschaft und die Liebe schenken Blumen. Gold is the gift of vanityand pride, Friendship and love offer flowers.Collection: Flower
If only it were God's will that printed and written materials have as much influence on the people as the princes and their censors fear! Considering the countless good books we have, the world would have changed for the better a long time ago.Collection: Change
An uprising would punish only the country, and that is out of the question. But there is yet another approach, the most effectiveform of resistance: contemptuous compliance.Collection: Country
Art is eternally young, but the poet ages. If only he remained as young as art! If only it aged with him!Collection: Art
When we interpret nature, we refer phenomena that are rarely entirely unintelligible back to something that actually exists, but is equally unintelligible.Collection: Nature
Two soldiers and a villain are enough to blow up the rights of the citizens.Collection: Blow
If human beings are immortal, so are animals. If matter has the ability to remember, it also has the ability to think.Collection: Thinking
Just as the queen bee, the highest-ranking, peerless creature of her hive, is surrounded by lowly drones to please her, whereas the workers produce honey, the same way is the one who sits on the throne an equal only to himself, and no one's companion.Collection: Queens
North and West have always vied for power and territory, but their recent competition as to which one is more insidious of the twohas been more peaceful.Collection: Competition
German diligence is actually endurance.Collection: Endurance
Austrian soldiers are like horses: brave but easily frightened.Collection: Horse
It is not a matter of desire, but of coercion and duty.Collection: Desire
Turning popular opinion upside down does not make an original.Collection: Doe
The verdict on Prince Metternich will soon be out: An excellent diplomat and a bad politician.Collection: Diplomats
Nothing genuinely historical was ever lost in this country. For this reason we have two ruling parties: villains and fools.Collection: Country
It's actually the spirit helping the spirit; it is the doctor, the bed, the potion.Collection: Healing
It is the emotions to which one objects in Germany most of all.Collection: Germany
Whoever considers morality the main objective of human existence, seems to me like a person who defines the purpose of a clock asnot going wrong. The first objective for a clock, is, however, that it does run; not going wrong is an additional regulative function. If not a watch's greatest accomplishment were not going wrong, unwound watches might be the best.Collection: Running
Much as I honor the wisdom of the princess--there is something more dashing about a man.Collection: Wisdom