Franz Grillparzer Quotes

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

It is the emotions to which one objects in Germany most of all.

Morality, a muzzle for the will; logic, a climbing iron for the mind.

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

Transcendence: that which transcends experience.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The graceful flowers of innocence are more valuable than the laurel crown of fame.

The noble woman is half a man, even a complete one. Only their imperfections make them women.

I would love to be able to write a tragedy in my imagination
it would turn into a masterpiece.

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

It is good insofar as it is not evil.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

It's actually the spirit helping the spirit; it is the doctor, the bed, the potion.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Whoever considers morality the main objective of human existence, seems to me like a person who defines the purpose of a clock asnot going wrong. The first objective for a clock, is, however, that it does run; not going wrong is an additional regulative function. If not a watch's greatest accomplishment were not going wrong, unwound watches might be the best.

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

I'd wish the government took honest people into consideration, it shows enough consideration for scoundrels.

The present is never poetic as it serves necessity, necessity, however, is prosaic.

Let the will embrace the highest ideals freely and with infinite strength, but let action first take hold of what lies closest.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Nothing genuinely historical was ever lost in this country. For this reason we have two ruling parties: villains and fools.

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

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.

Robespierre, this pedant of freedom!

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.

The state has no religion for the simple reason that it has each and everyone.

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.

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.

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

Human life, old and young, takes place between hope and remembrance. The young man sees all the gates to his desires open, and the old man remembers
his hopes.

The real genres: good and bad.

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

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

What a pathetic creature is man! His senses are awakened by the hope for the very thing whose consummation puts him to sleep.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Pity, but never love bestows kind words upon the slave.

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

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

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.

Woman is the crown of all creation, but Man is the head who wears it, and even the servant is master in his house.

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

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

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.

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.

No spoon has yet destroyed a mouth, but the knife of war cuts portions that are hard to swallow. Perhaps the big mouths of the privileged are able to cope with them, but they dull the teeth of the little people and ruin their stomachs.

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?

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.

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

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

Turning popular opinion upside down does not make an original.

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!

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.

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

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.

Right and proof are two crutches for everything bent and crooked that limps along.

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.

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

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

German diligence is actually endurance.

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.

What are the characteristics of today's world so that one may recognize it by them? It pays pensions and borrows money: credit and monuments.

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

Let the famous not denounce fame. Far from being empty and meaningless, it fills those it touches with divine power.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gold is the gift of vanityand pride, Friendship and love offer flowers.