Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington Quotes

He who would remain honest ought to keep away want.

We have a reading, a talking, and a writing public. When shall we have a thinking?

There are no persons capable of stooping so low as those who desire to rise in the world.

Bores: People who talk of themselves, when you are thinking only of yourself.

The infirmities of genius are often mistaken for its privileges.

It is a sad thing to look at happiness only through another's eyes.

The vices of the rich and great are mistaken for error; and those of the poor and lowly, for crimes.

A man should never boast of his courage, nor a woman of her virtue, lest their doing so should be the cause of calling their possession of them into question.

Those who are formed to win general admiration are seldom calculated to bestow individual happiness.

Love in France is a comedy; in England a tragedy; in Italy an opera seria; and in Germany a melodrama.

Women excel more in literary judgment than in literary production,
they are better critics than authors.

Satire, like conscience, reminds us of what we often wish to forget.

Haste is always ungraceful.

Mediocrity is beneath a brave soul.

We are more prone to murmur at the punishment of our faults than to lament them.

The difference between weakness and wickedness is much less than people suppose; and the consequences are nearly always the same.

A beautiful woman without fixed principles may be likened to those fair but rootless flowers which float in streams, driven by every breeze.

A woman's head is always influenced by her heart, but a man's heart is always influenced by his head.

Men who would persecute others for religious opinions, prove the errors of their own.

Men are capable of making great sacrifices, who are not willing to make the lesser ones, on which so much of the happiness of life depends. The great sacrifices are seldom called for, but the minor ones are in daily requisition; and the making them with cheerfulness and grace enhances their value ...

Only vain people wage war against the vanity of others.

There is no magician like love.

There is no knowledge for which so great a price is paid as a knowledge of the world; and no one ever became an adept in it except at the expense of a hardened or a wounded heart.

Imagination, which is the Eldorado of the poet and of the novel-writer, often proves the most pernicious gift to the individuals who compose the talkers instead of the writers in society.

A German writer observes: The noblest characters only show themselves in their real light. All others act comedy with their fellow-men even unto the grave.

Society punishes not the vices of its members, but their detection ...

Modern historians are all would-be philosophers; who, instead of relating facts as they occurred, give us their version, or rather perversions of them, always colored by their political prejudices, or distorted to establish some theory ...

Love matches are made by people who are content, for a month of honey, to condemn themselves to a life of vinegar.

Love and enthusiasm are always ridiculous, when not reciprocated by their objects.

Pleasure is like a cordial - a little of it is not injurious, but too much destroys.

Sure there's different roads from this to Dungarvan* - some thinks one road pleasanter, and some think another; wouldn't it be mighty foolish to quarrel for this? - and sure isn't it twice worse to thry to interfere with people for choosing the road they like best to heaven?

Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower.

Some people are capable of making great sacrifices, but few are capable of concealing how much the effort has cost them; and it is this concealment that constitutes their value.

People are always willing to follow advice when it accords with their own wishes.

A profound knowledge of life is the least enviable of all species of knowledge, because it can only be acquired by trials that make us regret the loss of our ignorance.

Alas! there is no casting anchor in the stream of time!

Heaven sends us misfortunes as a moral tonic.

Thoughts come maimed and plucked of plumage from the lips, which, from the pea, in the silence of your own leisure and study, would be born with far more beauty.

The future: A consolation for those who have no other.

The most certain mode of making people content with us is to make them content with themselves.

Genius is the gold in the mine, talent is the miner who works and brings it out.

Those can most easily dispense with society who are the most calculated to adorn it; they only are dependent on it who possess no mental resources, for though they bring nothing to the general mart, like beggars, they are too poor to stay at home.

Grief is, of all the passions, the one that is the most ingenious and indefatigable in finding food for its own subsistence.

To appear rich, we become poor.

Our weaknesses are the indigenous produce of our characters; but our strength is the forced fruit.

Many minds that have withstood the most severe trials have been broken down by a succession of ignoble cares.

There are some chagrins of the heart which a friend ought to try to console without betraying a knowledge of their existence, as there are physical maladies which a physician ought to seek to heal without letting the sufferer know that he has discovered their extent.

Listeners beware, for ye are doomed never to hear good of yourselves.

One of the most marked characteristics of our day is a reckless neglect of principles, and a rigid adherence to their semblance.