Best 202 quotes of Franz Grillparzer on MyQuotes

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

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

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

Although your knowledge is weak and small, you need not be silent: since you cannot be judges be at least witnesses.

A man may welcome his beloved with circumstance, but a woman's love and her concern for his well-being are discreet.

An uprising would punish only the country, and that is out of the question. But there is yet another approach, the most effectiveform of resistance: contemptuous compliance.

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

A pious woman's neighbor, a philanthropist's child, a liberal's servant--these three have a hard life.

Art compares to nature like wine to the grape.

Art is eternally young, but the poet ages. If only he remained as young as art! If only it aged with him!

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.

As youth lives in the future, so the adult lives in the past: No one rightly knows how to live in the present.

A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he candivide.

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

Austrian soldiers are like horses: brave but easily frightened.

A wise man can and should stand above his times, not so the poet, but he should be their apex.

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

Beauty satisfies the senses completely and at the same time uplifts the soul. That which gratifies the senses is pleasant, and that which uplifts the soul without being sensual in the least is good, true, right, anything you like, but not beautiful.

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

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

Bunglers and pedants judge art according to genre; they approve of this and dismiss that genre, but instead of genres, the open-minded connoisseur appreciates only individual works.

Captivating the spirit of the age is a matter of great talent; being swept away by it characterizes an average mind. The two are as different from one another as activity and passivity.

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

Chance arrives unannounced. It emerges, and when it leaves, we are lucky if the changes it has produced are only external.

Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists.

Compilers resemble gluttonous eaters who devour excessive quantities of healthy food just to excrete them as refuse.

Critics are reprimanded when they get sarcastic. How absurd! Is the torch of criticism supposed to shine without burning?

Dilettantes appreciate the work, professors the master at the same time.

Disregard for the consequences and for right and wrong nowadays passes as energy.

Distinctly different as a child, as an adolescent, in his prime and in his old age, man considers himself as one, not because he acts, but because he knows.

Do hurry and proclaim the concordat. Then castrate yourselves to keep from sinning.

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

Do old people always live in the past? What yesterday was firm and true, may not be so today.

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

Do you think that it is possible to have a mere taste of commonness? Either one hates it or makes common cause with it.

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

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

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

Es binden Sklavenfesseln nur die H a« nde, Der Sinn, er macht den Freien und den Knecht. The chains of slavery can only bind the hands. The mind makes us either free or enslaved.

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.

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

Finally and long overdue, your people, oppressed and disgraced by hatred and maliciousness, have achieved justice: now you enjoy full citizen's rights, but you'll remain Jews nonetheless.

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.

Genius differs from talent not by the amount of original thoughts, but by making the latter fertile and by positioning them properly, in other words, by integrating everything into a whole, whereas talent produces only fragments, no matter how beautiful.

Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful toneis silenced.

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

German diligence is actually endurance.

German radicalism: freedom-masturbation.

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

Gold schenkt die Eitelkeit, der rauhe Stolz, Die Freundschaft und die Liebe schenken Blumen. Gold is the gift of vanityand pride, Friendship and love offer flowers.