Maria Edgeworth

“The bore is usually considered a harmless creature, or of that class of irrationa bipeds who hurt only themselves.”

“I've a great fancy to see my own funeral afore I die.”

“Business was his aversion; Pleasure was his business.”

“When people are warm, they cannot stand picking terms.”

“The prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics, who aspire to the character of superior wisdom: but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestible proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their labors!”

“How success changes the opinion of men!”

“Some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug property.”

“The law, in our case, seems to make the right; and the very reverse ought to be done - the right should make the law.”

“An orator is the worse person to tell a plain fact.”

“Surely it is much more generous to forgive and remember, than to forgive and forget.”

“Fortune's wheel never stands still the highest point is therefore the most perilous.”

“Our Irish blunders are never blunders of the heart.”

“The human heart, at whatever age, opens only to the heart that opens in return.”