Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower.Collection: Inspirational
Conversation is the legs on which thought walks; and writing, the wings by which it flies.Collection: Writing
Society punishes not the vices of its members, but their detection.Collection: Vices
We have a reading, a talking, and a writing public. When shall we have a thinking?Collection: Reading
There are no persons capable of stooping so low as those who desire to rise in the world.Collection: Ambition
Our weaknesses are the indigenous produce of our characters; but our strength is the forced fruit.Collection: Character
There is no cosmetic like happinessCollection: Cosmetics
The difference between weakness and wickedness is much less than people suppose; and the consequences are nearly always the same.Collection: Differences
A profound knowledge of life is the least enviable of all species of knowledge, because it can only be acquired by trials that make us regret the loss of our ignorance.Collection: Regret
Praise is the only gift for which people are really grateful.Collection: Motivation
Men are capable of making great sacrifices, who are not willing to make the lesser ones, on which so much of the happiness of life depends. The great sacrifices are seldom called for, but the minor ones are in daily requisition; and the making them with cheerfulness and grace enhances their value.Collection: Sacrifice
Wit is the lightning of the mind, reason the sunshine, and reflection the moonlight.Collection: Sunshine
Genius is the gold in the mine, talent is the miner who works and brings it out.Collection: Gold
Reason dissipates the illusions of life, but does not console us for their departure.Collection: Departure
Satire, like conscience, reminds us of what we often wish to forget.Collection: Wish
To appear rich, we become poor.Collection: Rich
When the sun shines on you, you see your friends. It requires sunshine to be seen by them to advantage!Collection: Sunshine
Happiness is a rare plant that seldom takes root on earth-few ever enjoyed it, except for a brief period; the search after it is rarely rewarded by the discovery, but there is an admirable substitute for it... a contented spirit.Collection: Happiness
Some people are capable of making great sacrifices, but few are capable of concealing how much the effort has cost them; and it is this concealment that constitutes their value.Collection: Sacrifice
Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our buried hopes.Collection: Memories
The future: A consolation for those who have no other.Collection: Future
A man should never boast of his courage, nor a woman of her virtue, lest their doing so should be the cause of calling their possession of them into question.Collection: Men
Superstition is but the fear of belief.Collection: Superstitions
Calumny is the offspring of Envy.Collection: Calumny Is
The infirmities of genius are often mistaken for its privileges.Collection: Privilege
There are some chagrins of the heart which a friend ought to try to console without betraying a knowledge of their existence, as there are physical maladies which a physician ought to seek to heal without letting the sufferer know that he has discovered their extent.Collection: Heart
Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant; democracy, to many.Collection: Tyrants
Life would be as insupportable without the prospect of death, as it would be without sleep.Collection: Sleep
Thoughts come maimed and plucked of plumage from the lips, which, from the pea, in the silence of your own leisure and study, would be born with far more beauty.Collection: Silence
Many minds that have withstood the most severe trials have been broken down by a succession of ignoble cares.Collection: Broken
A beautiful woman without fixed principles may be likened to those fair but rootless flowers which float in streams, driven by every breeze.Collection: Beautiful
Bores: People who talk of themselves, when you are thinking only of yourself.Collection: Thinking
Flattery, if judiciously administered, is always acceptable.Collection: Flattery
He who fears not, is to be feared.Collection: Fear
We never respect those who amuse us, however we may smile at their comic powersCollection: Smile
Sure there's different roads from this to Dungarvan* - some thinks one road pleasanter, and some think another; wouldn't it be mighty foolish to quarrel for this? - and sure isn't it twice worse to thry to interfere with people for choosing the road they like best to heaven?Collection: Women
Love and enthusiasm are always ridiculous, when not reciprocated by their objects.Collection: Enthusiasm
To amend mankind, moralists should show them man, not as he is, but as he ought to be.Collection: Men
Men who would persecute others for religious opinions, prove the errors of their own.Collection: Religious
A poor man defended himself when charged with stealing food to appease the cravings of hunger, saying, the cries of the stomach silenced those of the conscience.Collection: Men
We are more prone to murmur at the punishment of our faults than to lament them.Collection: Punishment
Society seldom forgives those who have discovered the emptiness of its pleasures, and who can live independent of it and them.Collection: Independent
People seem to lose all respect for the past; events succeed each other with such velocity that the most remarkable one of a few years gone by, is no more remembered than if centuries had closed over it.Collection: Past
Imagination, which is the Eldorado of the poet and of the novel-writer, often proves the most pernicious gift to the individuals who compose the talkers instead of the writers in society.Collection: Imagination
Modern historians are all would-be philosophers; who, instead of relating facts as they occurred, give us their version, or rather perversions of them, always colored by their political prejudices, or distorted to establish some theory . . .Collection: Giving
When we find that we are not liked, we assert that we are not understood; when probably the dislike we have excited proceeds from our being too fully comprehended.Collection: Understanding
Only vain people wage war against the vanity of others.Collection: War
Listeners beware, for ye are doomed never to hear good of yourselves.Collection: Doomed
alas! there is no casting anchor in the stream of time!Collection: Anchors