Franz Grillparzer

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The uneducated person perceives only the individual phenomenon, the partly educated person the rule, and the educated person the exception.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“The ideas of an age are most abundant where they are not crowded by original ideas.”

“Prose talks and poetry sings.”