Franz Grillparzer Quotes

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.

Poetry, it is often said and loudly so, is life's true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work of literature looks in vain for Socrates.

You ardently strive for freedom, and I do wish you were free--but, rather than for your sake, so that government won't be.

Drive the women from the bed just as you drove them from the choir; a eunuch sings in Rome, and the priests masturbate.

How can you say that love is blind? Keener than a young eagle's is its sight.

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

A cure by regression is homeopathic, like healing the damage done by ministers and ignorance with stupidity and Jesuits.

If human beings are immortal, so are animals. If matter has the ability to remember, it also has the ability to think.

A person who looks different all the time frightens me. Only one animal changes its skin: the snake.

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?

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

Many said selfishness was the flaw of our modern age; but then self-conceit emerged from a corner of the deepest hell to join selfishness.

Moons and years pass by and are gone forever, but a beautiful moment shimmers through life a ray of light.

Since love is folly, a foolish woman is more dangerous than a wise one.

The verdict on Prince Metternich will soon be out: An excellent diplomat and a bad politician.

Reason and the ability to use it are two separate skills.

What is the use of aesthetics if they can neither teach how to produce beauty nor how to appreciate it in good taste? It exists because it behooves rational human beings to provide reasons for their actions and assessments. Even if aesthetics are not the mathematics of beauty, they are the proof of the calculation.

The prince exults whomever he selects as his consort, but the queen, rather than elevating the subject of her choice, humiliates him as a man. By all that is right, a man is not intended to be the husband of his wife, but a woman is to be her husband's wife.

Caution is the daughter of circumspection, but she tends to outgrow her mother.

Drink and be thankful to the host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need it.

Our poetry emulates the recent progress in military strategy: Our army's strength is the foot soldiers.

If someone took the finest marble and knew how to shape it artfully: Prometheus' material was lowly clay, but his statues walked.

There shall be no slave in your home, male or female: Least of all the mother of your son.

Progress will always have as its recourse to exaggerate what it cannot surpass.

Since people no longer attend church, theater remains as the only public service, and literature as the only private devotion.

Austrian soldiers are like horses: brave but easily frightened.

If we notice a few errors in the work of a proven master, we may and even will often be correct; if we believe, however, that he is completely and utterly mistaken, we are in danger of missing his entire concept.

At certain times, men regard poetry merely as a bright flame, but to women it was, and always will be, a warm fire.

How great seems human progress when we consider where it began, and how insignificant, when we contemplate the goals for which itstrives.

Is it true that one travels in order to know mankind? It is easier to get to know other people at home, but abroad one gets to know oneself.

My anger thought you too ignoble for my love, and close examination finds you too magnificent, and only equals are joined together smoothly.

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.

What is done for the children is doubly beneficial, since their success, obvious to everyone, educates the parents as well.

Boundless in your charity, but shrewd and cautious as a lender, you delight all those today whom you made beggars the day before.

The old harlot, German philosophy, has finally turned into a church lady.

Man lives two lives, woe, were it otherwise! One is seized by death, the other one, his honor, remains.

The uneducated person perceives only the individual phenomenon, the partly educated person the rule, and the educated person the exception.

He who takes people for smart pays an expensive lesson.

When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet's task to turn it into an audience.

I know how ingratitude burns, how falsehood tortures, for I have been deceived in friendship and in love; I have learned to lose and to resign myself.

Gratitude is a fickle thing, indeed. A person taking aim presses the weapon to his chest and cheek, but when he hits, he discardsit with indifference.

In the long run, only woman remains true to mankind's foremost mission. Whatever she achieves, she achieves through herself, and alone. Man's master is the--public.

Grief, first take on shape! what is shapeless causes fear and torment but when the enemy materializes, half the victory is won.

They are miserly, the princes of Austria, you need not grieve about it; they may not donate anything, but they allow themselves tobe fleeced, the good lords.

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.

Feeling and thinking are actually the blind man who carries the lame.

It is good insofar as it is not evil.

No shortcomings of other people cause us to be more intolerant than those which are caricatures of our own.