Top 200 Franz Grillparzer Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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.”

— Franz Grillparzer

102. “The courts used to be, fair and square, the avengers of secular crimes; but nowadays they demand respect even for the criminal.”

— Franz Grillparzer

103. “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

104. “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

105. “An uprising would punish only the country, and that is out of the question. But there is yet another approach, the most effectiveform of resistance: contemptuous compliance.”

— Franz Grillparzer

106. “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

107. “Pity, but never love bestows kind words upon the slave.”

— Franz Grillparzer

108. “Mozart starved, but you allow Thalberg and Liszt make tons of gold: Of course, you may think that someone immortal cannot die of hunger.”

— Franz Grillparzer

109. “Caution is the daughter of circumspection, but she tends to outgrow her mother.”

— Franz Grillparzer

110. “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

111. “In the arts, foolhardiness is always harmful; even worse, however, is clumsiness.”

— Franz Grillparzer

112. “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

113. “North and West have always vied for power and territory, but their recent competition as to which one is more insidious of the twohas been more peaceful.”

— Franz Grillparzer

114. “The military and the clergy cause us much annoyance; the clergy and the military, they empty our wallets and rob our intelligence.”

— Franz Grillparzer

115. “Human life, old and young, takes place between hope and remembrance. The young man sees all the gates to his desires open, and the old man remembers – his hopes.”

— Franz Grillparzer

116. “Man will return to his origins. Goethe has finally become as squiggly as the city of his fathers.”

— Franz Grillparzer

117. “I’d wish the government took honest people into consideration, it shows enough consideration for scoundrels.”

— Franz Grillparzer

118. “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

119. “Do you call the jewel blind, because your eye is?”

— Franz Grillparzer

120. “I cannot be exacting because I respect myself.”

— Franz Grillparzer

121. “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

122. “Reason and the ability to use it are two separate skills.”

— Franz Grillparzer

123. “There is one privilege we’ll never lose; currently it’s called nationality. It means that everyone was born somewhere, which is infact self-evident.”

— Franz Grillparzer

124. “A love that dies has never lived.”

— Franz Grillparzer

125. “Robespierre, this pedant of freedom!”

— Franz Grillparzer

126. “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

127. “Why I love the ancients so much? Aside from everything else, when I read them, the entire past between them and me unfolds at thesame time. The hearts of how many heroes and poets may have been set on fire by Plutarch’s biographies which now inspire me with their own and with borrowed flames!”

— Franz Grillparzer

128. “Turning popular opinion upside down does not make an original.”

— Franz Grillparzer

129. “Let the will embrace the highest ideals freely and with infinite strength, but let action first take hold of what lies closest.”

— Franz Grillparzer

130. “I look around me and nowhere do I see a stamp of disapproval with which nature marked a woman’s candid brow.”

— Franz Grillparzer

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

— Franz Grillparzer

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

— Franz Grillparzer

133. “To enlist the support of the people and of parliament, you only have to propose a profitable villainy.”

— Franz Grillparzer

134. “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

135. “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

136. “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

137. “Trousers and the reputation of not being a thief are similar in the following way: There is no particular honor in having them butonce they are lost, everyone thinks they have the right to insult us.”

— Franz Grillparzer

138. “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

139. “The real genres: good and bad.”

— Franz Grillparzer

140. “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

141. “Someone who is reluctant to say what he needs to say, often ends up doing so with an insolence whose crassness is proportionate tohis fear, once he gathers the necessary courage.”

— Franz Grillparzer

142. “Why does the past look so enticing to us? For the same reason why from a distance a meadow with flowers looks like a flower bed.”

— Franz Grillparzer

143. “Much as I honor the wisdom of the princess – there is something more dashing about a man.”

— Franz Grillparzer

144. “If someone were to think that trees are made to support the sky, they would all seem too short.”

— Franz Grillparzer

145. “Since people no longer attend church, theater remains as the only public service, and literature as the only private devotion.”

— Franz Grillparzer

146. “It’s actually the spirit helping the spirit; it is the doctor, the bed, the potion.”

— Franz Grillparzer

147. “Servants honor their master by their service.”

— Franz Grillparzer

148. “It is the emotions to which one objects in Germany most of all.”

— Franz Grillparzer

149. “The sun of a prince’s good graces resembles that in the skies in that it shines most kindly upon the blackest people.”

— Franz Grillparzer

150. “Love! Hate! Is there no third?”

— Franz Grillparzer