Best 76 quotes of Maria Edgeworth on MyQuotes

According to the Asiatics, Cupid's bow is strung with bees which are apt to sting, sometimes fatally, those who meddle with it.

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.

A love-match was the only thing for happiness, where the parties could any way afford it.

A man who sells his conscience for his interest will sell it for his pleasure. A man who will betray his country will betray his friend.

... 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.

An orator is the worse person to tell a plain fact.

Artificial manners vanish the moment the natural passions are touched.

a straight line is the shortest possible line between any two points - an axiom equally true in morals as in mathematics.

Beauties are always curious about beauties, and wits about wits.

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.

Bishop Wilkins prophesied that the time would come when gentlemen, when they were to go on a journey, would call for their wings as regularly as they call for their boots.

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.

Business was his aversion; Pleasure was his business.

Come when you're called; And do as you're bid; Shut the door after you; And you'll never be chid.

Did the Warwickshire militia, who were chiefly artisans, teach the Irish to drink beer, or did they learn from the Irish how to drink whiskey?

every man who takes a part in politics, especially in times when parties run high, must expect to be abused; they must bear it; and their friends must learn to bear it for them.

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.

Fortune's wheel never stands still the highest point is therefore the most perilous.

Habit is, to weak minds, a species of moral predestination, from which they have no power to escape.

Health can make money, but money cannot make health.

Home! With what different sensations different people pronounce and hear that word pronounced!

Hope can produce the finest and most permanent springs of action.

how impossible it is not to laugh in some company, or to laugh in others.

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.

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.

If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.

Illness was a sort of occupation to me, and I was always sorry to get well.

In marrying, a man does not, to be sure, marry his wife's mother; and yet a prudent man, when he begins to think of the daughter, would look sharp at the mother; ay, and back to the grandmother too, and along the whole female line of ancestry.

In real friendship the judgment, the genius, the prudence of each party become the common property of both.

I ... practiced all the arts of apology, evasion, and invisibility, to which procrastinators must sooner or later be reduced.

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.

It is unjust and absurd of those advancing in years, to expect of the young that confidence should come all and only on their side: the human heart, at whatever age, opens only to the heart that opens in return.

I've a great fancy to see my own funeral afore I die.

Let the sexes mutually forgive each other their follies; or, what is much better, let them combine their talents for their general advantage.

Love occupies a vast space in a woman's thoughts, but fills a small portion in a man's life.

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.

My mother took too much, a great deal too much, care of me; she over-educated, over-instructed, over-dosed me with premature lessons of prudence: she was so afraid that I should ever do a foolish thing, or not say a wise one, that she prompted my every word, and guided my every action. So I grew up, seeing with her eyes, hearing with her ears, and judging with her understanding, till, at length, it was found out that I had not eyes, ears or understanding of my own.

Nature's hasty conscience.

No man ever distinguished himself who could not bear to be laughed at.

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.

Now flattery can never do good; twice cursed in the giving and the receiving, it ought to be.

[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.

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.

Persons not habituated to reason often argue absurdly, because, from particular instances, they deduce general conclusions, and extend the result of their limited experience of individuals indiscriminately to whole classes.

Politeness only teaches us to save others from unnecessary pain.... You are not bound by politeness to tell any falsehoods.

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.

Promises are dangerous things to ask or to give.

Sir Patrick Rackrent lived and died a monument of old Irish hospitality.

Some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug property.

sometimes the very faults of parents produce a tendency to opposite virtues in their children.