Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach Quotes

Most imitators attempt the inimitable.

To have and not to give is often worse than to steal.

Wit is an intermittent fountain; kindness is a perennial spring.

You stay young as long as you can learn, acquire new habits, and suffer contradictions.

Kindness which is not inexhaustible does not deserve the name.

The wise man is seldom prudent.

Distrust your judgment the moment you can discern the shadow of a personal motive in it.

The believer who has never doubted will hardly convert a doubter.

A defeat borne with pride is also a victory.

Beware of the virtue which a man boasts is his.

The incurable ills are the imaginary ills.

Never strive, O artist, to create what you are not irresistibly impelled to create!

To accept reason is impossible if you don't already possess it.

Parents forgive their children least readily for the faults they themselves instilled in them.

To be satisfied with little is hard, to be satisfied with a lot is impossible.

How happy are the pessimists! What joy is theirs when they have proved there is no joy.

To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible.

Conquer, but never triumph.

Consider well before you immerse yourself in solitude whether your own company will be good for you.

If there be a faith that can move mountains, it is faith in one's own power.

Believe flatterers and you're lost; believe your enemies and you despair.

However much you paid for a beautiful illusion, you got a bargain.

What you wish to do you are apt to think you ought to do.

Misanthropy is a suit of armor lined with thorns.

An aphorism is the last link in a long chain of thought.

It's bad enough when married people bore one another, but it's much worse when only one of them bores the other.

It is unfortunate that superior talent and superior men are so seldom united.

He who has trusted where he ought not will surely mistrust where he ought not.

The insignificant labor; the great create.

There are women who love their husbands as blindly, as enthusiastically, and as enigmatically as nuns their cloister.

Pain is the great teacher of mankind. Beneath its breath souls develop.

Old age transfigures or fossilizes.

Hatred is a prolific vice; envy, a barren vice.

When the time comes in which one could, the time has passed in which one can.

We ask the poet: 'What subject have you chosen?' instead of: 'What subject has chosen you?

One remains young as long as one can still learn, can still take on new habits, can bear contradictions.

Nothing makes us more cowardly and unconscionable than the desire to be loved by everyone.

The world belongs to those who possess it, and is scorned by those to whom it should belong.

He who says patience, says courage, endurance, strength.

Age either transfigures or petrifies.

Pity is love in undress.

Exceptions are not always the proof of the old rule; they can also be the harbinger of a new one.

Consider once before you give, twice before you receive, and a thousand times before you ask.

One of the main goals of self-education is to eradicate that vanity in us without which we would never have been educated.

Authors from whom others steal should not complain, but rejoice. Where there is no game there are no poachers.

Much less evil would be done on earth if evil could not be done in the name of good.

N every exalted joy, there mingles a sense of gratitude.

Fools usually know best that which the wise despair of ever comprehending.

Unattainable wishes are often "pious." This seems to indicate that only profane wishes are fulfilled.

There is only one proof of ability - action.

Without imagination, there is no goodness, no wisdom.

Nothing is so irretrievably missed as an opportunity we encounter every day.

Not reading a beautiful book again because you've already read it, that is, as if you were not visiting a dear friend again because you know him already.

You can sink so fast that you think you are flying.

They understand but a little who understand only what can be explained.

The mediocre always feel as if they're fighting for their lives when confronted by the excellent.

I regret nothing, says arrogance; I will regret nothing, says inexperience.

When art find no temple open, it takes refuge in the workshop.

The manuscript in the drawer either rots or ripens.

Nowadays people are born to find fault. When they look at Achilles, they see only his heel.

Have patience with the quarrelsomeness of the stupid. It is not easy to comprehend that one does not comprehend.

That bad manners are so prevalent in the world is the fault of good manners.

In meeting again after a separation, acquaintances ask after our outward life, friends after our inner life.

An intelligent woman has millions of born enemies ... all the stupid men.

Nothing is so often and so irrevocably missed as the opportunity which crops up daily.

Our greatest indulgence towards a man springs from our despair of him.

Nothing is less promising than precocity. A young thistle is more like a future tree than is a young oak.

There are very few honest friends
the demand is not particularly great.

Genius points the way, talent takes it.

Privilege is the greatest enemy of right.

Generosity, to be perfect, should always be accompanied by a dash of humor.

Accident is veiled necessity.

A man with lofty ideas is an uncomfortable neighbor.

We don't believe in rheumatism and and true love untill the first

One has to do good in order for it to exist in the world.

There are more truths in a good book than its author meant to put in it.

We are valued wither too highly or not high enough; we are never taken at our real worth.

We can be wise from goodness and good from wisdom.

Not what we experience, but how we perceive what we experience, determines our fate.

We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack.

Passion is always suffering, even when gratified.

The world would be in better shape if people would take the same pains in the practice of the simplest moral laws as they exert in intellectualizing over the most subtle moral questions.

Many a truth is the result of an error.

Grace is the outcome of inward harmony.

In this world, all power rests upon force.

The poor never estimate as a virtue the generosity of the rich.

"People's minds are trained largely at the expense of their hearts." This is not so; it is only that there are more educable minds than there are educable hearts.

Only those few people who practice it believe in goodness.

A book cannot easily be too bad for the general public, but may easily be too good.

Never expect women to be sincere, so long as they are educated to think that their first aim in life is to please.

We usually learn to wait only when we have no longer anything to wait for.

Since the well-known victory over the hare by the tortoise, the descendants of the tortoise think themselves miracles of speed.

Imaginary evils are incurable.

Do not consider yourself deprived because your dreams were not fulfilled; the truly deprived have never dreamed.

Those who understand only what can be explained understand very little.

None are so inconsiderate as those who demand nothing of life other than their own personal comfort.

If you have one good idea, people will lend you twenty.

We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for.

One thought cannot awake without awakening others.

He who believes in freedom of the will has never loved and never hated.