Maria Edgeworth
When one illusion vanishes, another shall appear, and, still leading me forward towards an horizon that retreats as I advance, the happy prospect of futurity shall vanish only with my existence.Collection: Horizon
Young ladies who think of nothing but dress, public amusements, and forming what they call high connexions, are undoubtedly most easily managed, by the fear of what the world will say of them.Collection: Thinking
Let the sexes mutually forgive each other their follies; or, what is much better, let them combine their talents for their general advantage.Collection: Sex
How is it that hope so powerfully excites, and fear so absolutely depresses all our faculties?Collection: Hope
Our pleasures in literature do not, I think, decline with age; last 1st of January was my eighty-second birthday, and I think that I had as much enjoyment from books as I ever had in my life.Collection: Book
there is no reasoning with imagination.Collection: Imagination
It is quite fitting that charity should begin at home ... but then it should not end at home; for those that help nobody will find none to help them in time of need.Collection: Home
When the mind is full of any one subject, that subject seems to recur with extraordinary frequency - it appears to pursue or to meet us at every turn: in every conversation that we hear in every book we open, in every newspaper we take up, the reigning idea recurs; and then we are surprised, and exclaim at these wonderful coincidences.Collection: Book
why will friends publish all the trash they can scrape together of celebrated people?Collection: People
Beauties are always curious about beauties, and wits about wits.Collection: Curious
Alarmed successively by every fashionable medical terror of the day, she dosed her children with every specific which was publicly advertised or privately recommended...The consequence was, that the dangers, which had at first been imaginary, became real: these little victims of domestic medicine never had a day's health: they looked, and were, more dead than alive.Collection: Children
Politeness only teaches us to save others from unnecessary pain.... You are not bound by politeness to tell any falsehoods.Collection: Pain
[On collectors of quotations:] How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets.Collection: Suffering
... an inaccurate use of words produces such a strange confusion in all reasoning, that in the heat of debate, the combatants, unable to distinguish their friends from their foes, fall promiscuously on both.Collection: Fall
Obtain power, then, by all means; power is the law of man; make it yours.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Real
The labor of thinking was so great to me, that having once come to a conclusion upon any subject, I would rather persist in it, right or wrong, than be at the trouble of going over the process again to revise and rectify my judgment.Collection: Thinking
I ... practiced all the arts of apology, evasion, and invisibility, to which procrastinators must sooner or later be reduced.Collection: Art
First loves are not necessarily more foolish than others; but the 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.Collection: First Love
Habit is, to weak minds, a species of moral predestination, from which they have no power to escape.Collection: Mind
Idleness, ennui, noise, mischief, riot, and a nameless train of mistaken notions of pleasure, are often classed, in a young man's mind, under the general head of liberty.Collection: Men
Come when you're called; And do as you're bid; Shut the door after you; And you'll never be chid.Collection: Doors
The unaffected language of real feeling and benevolence is easily understood, and is never ridiculous.Collection: Real
Beauty is a great gift of heaven; not for the purpose of female vanity, but a great gift for one who loves, and wishes to be beloved.Collection: Beauty
how impossible it is not to laugh in some company, or to laugh in others.Collection: Laughter
The bore is good for promoting sleep; but though he causeth sleep in others, it is uncertain whether he ever sleeps himself; as few can keep awake in his company long enough to see. It is supposed that when he sleeps it is with his mouth open.Collection: Sleep
I find the love of garden grows upon me as I grow older more and more. Shrubs and flowers and such small gay things, that bloom and please and fade and wither and are gone and we care not for them, are refreshing interests, in life, and if we cannot say never fading pleasures, we may say unreproved pleasures and never grieving losses.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Hope
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.Collection: Sports
when driven to the necessity of explaining, I found that I did not myself understand what I meant.Collection: Driven
you've always been living on prospects; for my part, I'd rather have a mole-hill in possession than a mountain in prospect.Collection: Thinking
The Irish sometimes make and keep a vow against whiskey; these vows are usually limited to a short time.Collection: Drinking
A love-match was the only thing for happiness, where the parties could any way afford it.Collection: Party
Love occupies a vast space in a woman's thoughts, but fills a small portion in a man's life.Collection: Men
Nor elves, nor fays, nor magic charm, Have pow'r, or will, to work us harm; For those who dare the truth to tell, Fays, elves, and fairies, wish them well.Collection: Magic
Illness was a sort of occupation to me, and I was always sorry to get well.Collection: Sorry
Possessed, as are all the fair daughters of Eve, of an hereditary propensity, transmitted to them undiminished through succeeding generations, to be 'soonmoved withtheslightesttouch of blame'; very little precept and practice will confirm them in the habit, and instruct them all the maxims, of self-justification.Collection: Daughter
We perfectly agreed in our ideas of traveling; we hurried from place to place as fast as horses and wheels, and curses and guineas, could carry us.Collection: Travel
Books only spoil the originality of genius. Very well for those who can’t think for themselves – But when one has made up one’s opinions, there is no use in reading.Collection: Reading