Franz Grillparzer Quotes

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

Franz Grillparzer

#2. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

#3. Recently, the Germans have developed a tendency to prefer the so-called first (youthful) style of great artists to their mature works. Could it be that they do not realize that their aesthetic criteria, generally speaking, are juvenile?

Franz Grillparzer

#4. The most irascible person is most likely to become apathetic in dangerous situations.

Franz Grillparzer

#5. History is the zoology of the human race.

Franz Grillparzer

#6. Schiller moves upward. Goethe comes from up above.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#8. Turning popular opinion upside down does not make an original.

Franz Grillparzer

#9. Once you have looked at the land from atop the Kahlenberg, you will understand what I write and who I am.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#11. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#13. A love that dies has never lived.

Franz Grillparzer

#14. If someone took the finest marble and knew how to shape it artfully: Prometheus' material was lowly clay, but his statues walked.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#16. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#19. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#22. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

#23. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

#24. Reason and the ability to use it are two separate skills.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#27. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

#28. Distinctly different as a child, as an adolescent, in his prime and in his old age, man considers himself as one, not because he acts, but because he knows.

Franz Grillparzer

#29. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

#30. Art compares to nature like wine to the grape.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#32. When we interpret nature, we refer phenomena that are rarely entirely unintelligible back to something that actually exists, but is equally unintelligible.

Franz Grillparzer

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. Historical! Must it be historical to catch your attention? Even though historicity, like notoriety, denotes nothing more than thatsomething has occurred.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#37. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#43. I cannot be exacting because I respect myself.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#47. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

#48. What raises great poetry above all else
it is the entire person and also the entire world.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#50. He who takes people for smart pays an expensive lesson.

Franz Grillparzer

#51. Captivating the spirit of the age is a matter of great talent; being swept away by it characterizes an average mind. The two are as different from one another as activity and passivity.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#55. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

#56. The office of the prince and that of the writer are defined and assigned as follows: the nobleman gives rank to the written work,the writer provides food for the prince.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#58. It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.

Franz Grillparzer

#59. In early times, before the floods swept across the world, there was life, albeit odd, as one can see from the fossils of mammoth bones, and there was the regime of Prince Metternich.

Franz Grillparzer

#60. Let no one say that taking action is hard. Action is aided by courage, by the moment, by impulse, and the hardest thing in the world is making a decision.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#63. 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

#64. Beauty satisfies the senses completely and at the same time uplifts the soul. That which gratifies the senses is pleasant, and that which uplifts the soul without being sensual in the least is good, true, right, anything you like, but not beautiful.

Franz Grillparzer

#65. What is done for the children is doubly beneficial, since their success, obvious to everyone, educates the parents as well.

Franz Grillparzer

#66. Why must ancients, and provided the same talent, be better than modern authors?
Free to exploit the vast realm of the simpleand the natural, they did not have to be artificial in order to be original (which every artist aspires to be).

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#68. 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

#69. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#71. Austrian soldiers are like horses: brave but easily frightened.

Franz Grillparzer

#72. Bunglers and pedants judge art according to genre; they approve of this and dismiss that genre, but instead of genres, the open-minded connoisseur appreciates only individual works.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#74. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

#75. 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

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

Franz Grillparzer

#77. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

#78. The first indication of a young person's growing smarter is that he no longer understands the things which he used to consider quite intelligible and self-evident.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#80. The prince exults whomever he selects as his consort, but the queen, rather than elevating the subject of her choice, humiliates him as a man. By all that is right, a man is not intended to be the husband of his wife, but a woman is to be her husband's wife.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#82. The ideas of an age are most abundant where they are not crowded by original ideas.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#84. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

#85. In order to succeed in a profession, a person not only needs to have its good, but also its bad qualities. The former are the spirit, the latter is the body of the job.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#89. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

#90. Gold is the gift of vanity and common pride, but flowers are the gift of love and friendship.

Franz Grillparzer

#91. Soon there will be nothing truly profound that is not achieved by everyone, and of the difficult things in this world only one will be left: simplicity.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#94. 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.

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

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

Franz Grillparzer

#100. Boundless in your charity, but shrewd and cautious as a lender, you delight all those today whom you made beggars the day before.

Franz Grillparzer