Franz Grillparzer quotes:

I look around me and nowhere do I see a stamp of disapproval with which nature marked a woman's candid brow.

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

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

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.

Science and art, or by the same token, poetry and prose differ from one another like a journey and an excursion. The purpose of the journey is its goal, the purpose of an excursion is the process.

Without a notion of the transcendental, human beings would, indeed, be animals; however, only fools can be convinced of it, and only degenerates need such a conviction.

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

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

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

Swear words and profanities are mere abbreviations of speech, similar to the abbreviations in writing.

To declaim freedom verses seems like a poem within a poem; freedom requires guns, it requires arms, but no feet.

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.

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.

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

The courts used to be, fair and square, the avengers of secular crimes; but nowadays they demand respect even for the criminal.

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

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

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

Isn't it awful that cold feet make for a cold imagination and that a pair of woollen socks induce good thoughts!

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Mozart starved, but you allow Thalberg and Liszt make tons of gold: Of course, you may think that someone immortal cannot die of hunger"

A heart that overflows may seek out merrymaking and boisterous festivities to quietly rejoice, unnoticed amidst the reveling crowds.

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

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

Only by himself, with one acre and a house, will a dunce be a dunce. Once he manages to gain power, he'll turn into a scoundrel.

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

What raises great poetry above all else--it is the entire person and also the entire world.

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

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

Those who want to row on the ocean of human knowledge do not get far, and the storm drives those out of their course who set sail.

I cannot be exacting because I respect myself.

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

The way in which modern German poetry follows theories reminds me of pupils who, scolded by their teacher for their insubordination, justify themselves by saying that they invented new rules of propriety according to which they are quite well- behaved.

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.

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.

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

I understand the phrase "Honor the Women" all too well: the poet has probably a wife of his own, but he prefers to honor another.

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

In early times, before the floods swept across the world, there was life, albeit odd, as one can see from the fossils of mammoth bones, and there was the regime of Prince Metternich.

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

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

People of talent resemble a musical instrument more closely than they do a musician. Without outside help, they produce not a single sound, but given even the slightest touch, and a magnificent tune emanates from them.

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

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.

Robespierre, this pedant of freedom!

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.

Why do comparisons of words and tone poems (poetry and music) never take into consideration that the word is a mere signifier, but that the sound, aside from being a signifier, is also an object?

Turning popular opinion upside down does not make an original.

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

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

Just as the queen bee, the highest-ranking, peerless creature of her hive, is surrounded by lowly drones to please her, whereas the workers produce honey, the same way is the one who sits on the throne an equal only to himself, and no one's companion.

German radicalism: freedom-masturbation.

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

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

It's the misfortune of German authors that not a single one of them dares to expose his true character. Everyone thinks that he has to be better than he is.

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.

When receiving an order, many servants repeat their "yes" numerous times, especially the lazy ones.

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.

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

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.

The likeness of the world? A shadow! And world's glory? A dream!

The ideas of an age are most abundant where they are not crowded by original ideas.

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

History is the zoology of the human race.

You even called me stupid in your verse, and I'm almost agreeing, for where stupidity is involved, you are quite an expert, friend.

This searching and doubting and vacillating where nothing is clear but the arrogance of quest. I, too, had such noble ideas when I was still a boy.

The main reason why men and women make different aesthetic judgments is the fact that the latter, generally incapable of abstraction, only admire what meets their complete approval.

Prose talks and poetry sings.

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

The military and the clergy cause us much annoyance; the clergy and the military, they empty our wallets and rob our intelligence.

I love the pride whose measure is its own eminence and not the insignificance of someone else.

The course of modern learning leads from humanism via nationalism to bestiality.

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

Those whom the gods chose as their property must not consort with mortals.

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

You say I'm small? I certainly can relate, although it is a matter of perspective. The distance is deceptive, my friend, you standtoo low.

No matter which word it is, when I pronounce repeatedly, it ends up sounding utterly ridiculous and meaningless to me.

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

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

It is good insofar as it is not evil.

It is not a matter of desire, but of coercion and duty.

Austrian soldiers are like horses: brave but easily frightened.

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.

Plato calls complacency the companion of loneliness.

The sun of a prince's good graces resembles that in the skies in that it shines most kindly upon the blackest people.

I notice well that one stray step from the habitual path leads irresistibly into a new direction. Life moves forward, it never reverses its course.

How frightening it is to have reached the height of human accomplishment in art that must forever borrow from life's abundance.

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

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

Art compares to nature like wine to the grape.

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.

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

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

The real genres: good and bad.

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

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.

Trousers and the reputation of not being a thief are similar in the following way: There is no particular honor in having them butonce they are lost, everyone thinks they have the right to insult us.

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

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

Once you have looked at the land from atop the Kahlenberg, you will understand what I write and who I am.

Perhaps the most embarrassing experience is being caught at a lie by a simpleton who sneers at our asinine cleverness.

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

North and West have always vied for power and territory, but their recent competition as to which one is more insidious of the twohas been more peaceful.

German diligence is actually endurance.

There is one privilege we'll never lose; currently it's called nationality. It means that everyone was born somewhere, which is infact self-evident.

Profundity easily turns into dullness and astuteness deteriorates into wit. Be guided by natural common sense and it will accommodate great and small.

Why do villains have so much influence? Because the honest people are terribly dense.

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.

Schiller moves upward. Goethe comes from up above.

Trying to conceal a crime is like burying a seed in the ground.

The ramparts of Vienna are crumbling into the sand; no one wants to live so confined, however, the entire country is already surrounded by a Chinese wall!

It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.

He who takes people for smart pays an expensive lesson.

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.

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.