Franz Grillparzer Quotes

In certain countries, people seem to be think that three asses together make one intelligent person. However, that is completely wrong. Several asses in concreto make the ass in abstracto and that is a most terrifying animal.

To test a modest man's modesty do not investigate if he ignores applause, find out if he abides criticism.

In order to succeed in a profession, a person not only needs to have its good, but also its bad qualities. The former are the spirit, the latter is the body of the job.

Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun.

No one will stop to help you when you are in need, but everyone forces opinions upon you that you do not require.

Erroneous views and presumptuousness send a talent to the insane asylum.

Even with limited intelligence, knowing oneself is not as difficult as some say, but to act according to what one has realized about oneself in real life is as difficult as practicing anything else, compared to theory.

Why I love the ancients so much? Aside from everything else, when I read them, the entire past between them and me unfolds at thesame time. The hearts of how many heroes and poets may have been set on fire by Plutarch's biographies which now inspire me with their own and with borrowed flames!

Metaphysics must be based on what exists, for it has the task of explicating it.

If someone were to think that trees are made to support the sky, they would all seem too short.

Lap-dogs and blood-hounds enjoy the greatest respect at court; house-dogs and no dogs at all are not even considered.

In the arts, foolhardiness is always harmful; even worse, however, is clumsiness.

When mundane, lowly activities are at stake, too much insight is detrimental — far-sightedness errs in immediate concerns.

Piety is the fermentation of the forming mind and the putrefaction of the disintegrating one.

Whoever places his trust into a system will soon be without a home. While you are building your third story, the two lower ones have already been dismantled.

The thing that pleases is not always good and, helas, the good thing does not always please.

What's the meaning of all the pious clamor, condemning cocks and hens? Those who have no teeth are the greatest meat-haters.

Do you call the jewel blind, because your eye is?

The manifestation of poetry in external life is formal perfection. True sentiment grows within, and art must represent internal phenomena externally.

Mankind is getting smarter every day. Actually, it only seems so. At least we are making progress. We're progressing, to be sure, ever more deeply into the forest.

Our age believed herself pregnant with auspicious progeny, but when her hour came, it turned out to be dropsy.

Women, children, Tyroleans and preachers want to create a new kingdom of God, but the God of their kingdom looks like women, children, preachers, and Tyrolians.

I am a woman, and even if I could proceed with harshness and rigidity, it would disgust me nonetheless.

Man will return to his origins. Goethe has finally become as squiggly as the city of his fathers.

As far as the arts and the sciences are concerned, the German mind appreciates most highly that which it does not understand of the latter, and that which it does not enjoy of the former.

Before passing different laws for different people, I'd relinquish myself unto you as your slave.

Gold is the gift of vanity and common pride, but flowers are the gift of love and friendship.

From a distance the rushing of the torrent delights and uplifts us, but it rocks us in a flimsy boat, we are overwhelmed by despair. The same applies to danger.

To enlist the support of the people and of parliament, you only have to propose a profitable villainy.

Who could deny that our Austria is richer than any other country? As the saying goes: "We have money like manure.

When we interpret nature, we refer phenomena that are rarely entirely unintelligible back to something that actually exists, but is equally unintelligible.

A book is quite a beautiful thing, even more so learning. Together, however, all they amount to is called book-learning.

Ideas are not thoughts; the thought respects the boundaries that the idea ignores thereby failing to realize itself.

The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child's delight in bright pictures.

Do not push so fast ahead, do slow down a bit! Otherwise you won't catch up with yourselves.

Servants honor their master by their service.

Plato calls complacency the companion of loneliness.

A flutist who is moved to tears by his own performance will soon make the listeners laugh because of the sounds that he produces.

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.

The first indication of a young person's growing smarter is that he no longer understands the things which he used to consider quite intelligible and self-evident.

Two soldiers and a villain are enough to blow up the rights of the citizens.

The office of the prince and that of the writer are defined and assigned as follows: the nobleman gives rank to the written work,the writer provides food for the prince.

A woman's passion is not the measure of a man's love.

The character of the crowds is made up of mimicry and hostility.

In Germany, a certain artistic sense is fairly common, but the artist's sense is foreign there.

The Germans believe that, no matter where, they can get by on knowledge alone. Art, however, requires skill.

Schiller moves upward. Goethe comes from up above.

Never expect any recognition here--the system prohibits it. The cross is not affixed to the genius, no, the genius is affixed to the cross.