Franz Grillparzer famous quotes

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

#Lightning #Genius #Sun

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

#Pride #Insignificance

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

#Thanksgiving #Being Thankful #Important

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

#Looks #Candid #Stamps

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

#Thinking #Sky #Support

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.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Believe #Errors #Missing

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.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Progress #Forests #Mankind

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

#People #Causes #Caricatures

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.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Character #Thinking #Dare

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

#Beautiful #Moon #Light

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

#Ideas #Realizing #Failing

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

#Needs #Helping #Opinion

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.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Ocean #Sailing #Storm

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

#Stupid #Silly #Experts

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

#Judging #Needs #Silent

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

#Individual #Educated #Phenomenon

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.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Mirrors #Looks #Literature

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

#Men #Fire #Flames

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

#Humility #Pride #Men

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.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Art #Science #Journey

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.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Boys #Ideas #Arrogance

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

#Tasks #Poet #Theater

The cradle of the future is the grave of the past.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Future #Past #Cradle

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

#Past #Adults #Youth

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

#Law #People #Different

Prose talks and poetry sings.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Poetry #Prose

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

#Art #Age #Aging

Freedom requires guns.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Gun

Es binden Sklavenfesseln nur die H a« nde, Der Sinn, er macht den Freien und den Knecht. The chains of slavery can only bind the hands. The mind makes us either free or enslaved.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Hands #Mind #Slavery

Gold schenkt die Eitelkeit, der rauhe Stolz, Die Freundschaft und die Liebe schenken Blumen. Gold is the gift of vanityand pride, Friendship and love offer flowers.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Flower #Pride #Love And Friendship

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.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Men #Remembrance #Desire

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

#Gun #Feet #Arms

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

#Progress #Recourse

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

#Ideas #Age #Original Ideas

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

#Too Much #Stakes #Insight

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?
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Sound #Poetry And Music #Tone

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

#Fame #Empty #Divine

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

#Government #People #Wish

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

#Anger #Together #Examination

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.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Men #Appreciate #Different

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

#Mother #Home #Son

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.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Home #Uprising #Two

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.
-- Franz Grillparzer

#Animal #Needs #Fool

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

#Thinking #Gold #May