Franz Grillparzer quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Franz Grillparzer

Franz Grillparzer Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Franz Grillparzer on Wise Famous Quotes.

Never expect any recognition here
the system prohibits it. The cross is not affixed to the genius, no, the genius is affixed to the cross.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Robespierre, this pedant of freedom!

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

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.

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

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

Turning popular opinion upside down does not make an original.

Since people no longer attend church, theater remains as the only public service, and literature as the only private devotion.

Servants honor their master by their service.

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

Love! Hate! Is there no third?

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

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

Schiller moves upward. Goethe comes from up above.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

It is good insofar as it is not evil.

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.

Since love is folly, a foolish woman is more dangerous than a wise one.

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

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

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

Why does the past look so enticing to us? For the same reason why from a distance a meadow with flowers looks like a flower bed.

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

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

The German mind, may it live! Almost invisible as a mind, it finally manifests itself assertively as a conviction.

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

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

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

Today is, after all, today, but yesterday is of the same substance as tomorrow.

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

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.

Transcendence: that which transcends experience.

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

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

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

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

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

History is the zoology of the human race.

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

Jealousy is a grievous passion that jealously seeks what causes grief.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He who takes people for smart pays an expensive lesson.

German diligence is actually endurance.

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

The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.

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.

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

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

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

Much as I honor the wisdom of the princess
there is something more dashing about a man.

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

Prose talks and poetry sings.

When mundane, lowly activities are at stake, too much insight is detrimental - far-sightedness errs in immediate concerns.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

How can you say that love is blind? Keener than a young eagle's is its sight.

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.

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

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

Praised be the good willing women who understand and take part in the fun
the body is an exacting beater, and even the heart is made of flesh.

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

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

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

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

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

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