Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworthwas a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe. She held advanced views, for a woman of her time, on estate management, politics and education, and corresponded with some of the leading literary and economic writers, including Sir Walter Scott and David Ricardo...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth1 January 1767
CountryIreland
Beauties are always curious about beauties, and wits about wits.
Confidence is the best proof of love.
It is not so easy to do good as those who have never attempted it may imagine.
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.
Alarmed successively by every fashionable medical terror of the day, she dosed her children with every specific which was publicly advertised or privately recommended...The consequence was, that the dangers, which had at first been imaginary, became real: these little victims of domestic medicine never had a day's health: they looked, and were, more dead than alive.
A man who sells his conscience for his interest will sell it for his pleasure. A man who will betray his country will betray his friend.
My mother took too much, a great deal too much, care of me; she over-educated, over-instructed, over-dosed me with premature lessons of prudence: she was so afraid that I should ever do a foolish thing, or not say a wise one, that she prompted my every word, and guided my every action. So I grew up, seeing with her eyes, hearing with her ears, and judging with her understanding, till, at length, it was found out that I had not eyes, ears or understanding of my own.
Man is to be held only by the slightest chains; with the idea that he can break them at pleasure, he submits to them in sport.
Possessed, as are all the fair daughters of Eve, of an hereditary propensity, transmitted to them undiminished through succeeding generations, to be 'soonmoved withtheslightesttouch of blame'; very little precept and practice will confirm them in the habit, and instruct them all the maxims, of self-justification.
How success changes the opinion of men!
When one illusion vanishes, another shall appear, and, still leading me forward towards an horizon that retreats as I advance, the happy prospect of futurity shall vanish only with my existence.
We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present.
The bore is usually considered a harmless creature, or of that class of irrationa bipeds who hurt only themselves.
Bishop Wilkins prophesied that the time would come when gentlemen, when they were to go on a journey, would call for their wings as regularly as they call for their boots.