Quote

What a misfortune it isto be bornawoman!? Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible to show usthenew limits, the Gothic structure, theimpenetrable barriers of our prison.

Maria Edgeworth

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Maria Edgeworth
Age: 81 †
Born: 1768
Born: January 1
Died: 1849
Died: May 22
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
Oxon.
Eliza Edgeworth
Shows
Seek
Gothic
Light
Limits
Misfortune
Make
Prove
Rays
Darkness
Misfortunes
Break
Barriers
Knowledge
Visible
Upon
Prison
Irremediable
Show
Structure
Wretchedness

More quotes by Maria Edgeworth

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Confidence is the best proof of love.
Maria Edgeworth
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If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.
Maria Edgeworth
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Nor elves, nor fays, nor magic charm, Have pow'r, or will, to work us harm For those who dare the truth to tell, Fays, elves, and fairies, wish them well.
Maria Edgeworth
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There is no moment like the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards: they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence.
Maria Edgeworth
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Love occupies a vast space in a woman's thoughts, but fills a small portion in a man's life.
Maria Edgeworth
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[On collectors of quotations:] How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets.
Maria Edgeworth
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It is unjust and absurd of those advancing in years, to expect of the young that confidence should come all and only on their side: the human heart, at whatever age, opens only to the heart that opens in return.
Maria Edgeworth
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I find the love of garden grows upon me as I grow older more and more. Shrubs and flowers and such small gay things, that bloom and please and fade and wither and are gone and we care not for them, are refreshing interests, in life, and if we cannot say never fading pleasures, we may say unreproved pleasures and never grieving losses.
Maria Edgeworth
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every man who takes a part in politics, especially in times when parties run high, must expect to be abused they must bear it and their friends must learn to bear it for them.
Maria Edgeworth
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Did the Warwickshire militia, who were chiefly artisans, teach the Irish to drink beer, or did they learn from the Irish how to drink whiskey?
Maria Edgeworth
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How is it that hope so powerfully excites, and fear so absolutely depresses all our faculties?
Maria Edgeworth
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Sir Patrick Rackrent lived and died a monument of old Irish hospitality.
Maria Edgeworth
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We cannot judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect accuracy from their actions or their appearance in public it is from their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters.
Maria Edgeworth
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Beauty is a great gift of heaven not for the purpose of female vanity, but a great gift for one who loves, and wishes to be beloved.
Maria Edgeworth
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An orator is the worse person to tell a plain fact.
Maria Edgeworth
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We perfectly agreed in our ideas of traveling we hurried from place to place as fast as horses and wheels, and curses and guineas, could carry us.
Maria Edgeworth
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In marrying, a man does not, to be sure, marry his wife's mother and yet a prudent man, when he begins to think of the daughter, would look sharp at the mother ay, and back to the grandmother too, and along the whole female line of ancestry.
Maria Edgeworth
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How success changes the opinion of men!
Maria Edgeworth
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When the mind is full of any one subject, that subject seems to recur with extraordinary frequency - it appears to pursue or to meet us at every turn: in every conversation that we hear in every book we open, in every newspaper we take up, the reigning idea recurs and then we are surprised, and exclaim at these wonderful coincidences.
Maria Edgeworth
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Promises are dangerous things to ask or to give.
Maria Edgeworth