Top 200 Franz Grillparzer Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “They are miserly, the princes of Austria, you need not grieve about it; they may not donate anything, but they allow themselves tobe fleeced, the good lords.”

— Franz Grillparzer

152. “Erroneous views and presumptuousness send a talent to the insane asylum.”

— Franz Grillparzer

153. “If only it were God’s will that printed and written materials have as much influence on the people as the princes and their censors fear! Considering the countless good books we have, the world would have changed for the better a long time ago.”

— Franz Grillparzer

154. “From a distance the rushing of the torrent delights and uplifts us, but it rocks us in a flimsy boat, we are overwhelmed by despair. The same applies to danger.”

— Franz Grillparzer

155. “The state has no religion for the simple reason that it has each and everyone.”

— Franz Grillparzer

156. “Historical! Must it be historical to catch your attention? Even though historicity, like notoriety, denotes nothing more than thatsomething has occurred.”

— Franz Grillparzer

157. “In early times, before the floods swept across the world, there was life, albeit odd, as one can see from the fossils of mammoth bones, and there was the regime of Prince Metternich.”

— Franz Grillparzer

158. “Our age believed herself pregnant with auspicious progeny, but when her hour came, it turned out to be dropsy.”

— Franz Grillparzer

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

— Franz Grillparzer

160. “Art is eternally young, but the poet ages. If only he remained as young as art! If only it aged with him!”

— Franz Grillparzer

161. “Today is, after all, today, but yesterday is of the same substance as tomorrow.”

— Franz Grillparzer

162. “How great seems human progress when we consider where it began, and how insignificant, when we contemplate the goals for which itstrives.”

— Franz Grillparzer

163. “Those whom the gods chose as their property must not consort with mortals.”

— Franz Grillparzer

164. “Die Inspiration war mein Gott und ist es geblieben.”

— Franz Grillparzer

165. “The Germans believe that, no matter where, they can get by on knowledge alone. Art, however, requires skill.”

— Franz Grillparzer

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

— Franz Grillparzer

167. “Two soldiers and a villain are enough to blow up the rights of the citizens.”

— Franz Grillparzer

168. “The verdict on Prince Metternich will soon be out: An excellent diplomat and a bad politician.”

— Franz Grillparzer

169. “Profundity easily turns into dullness and astuteness deteriorates into wit. Be guided by natural common sense and it will accommodate great and small.”

— Franz Grillparzer

170. “A man may welcome his beloved with circumstance, but a woman’s love and her concern for his well-being are discreet.”

— Franz Grillparzer

171. “What raises great poetry above all else – it is the entire person and also the entire world.”

— Franz Grillparzer

172. “When receiving an order, many servants repeat their “yes” numerous times, especially the lazy ones.”

— Franz Grillparzer

173. “Lap-dogs and blood-hounds enjoy the greatest respect at court; house-dogs and no dogs at all are not even considered.”

— Franz Grillparzer

174. “The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child’s delight in bright pictures.”

— Franz Grillparzer

175. “When we interpret nature, we refer phenomena that are rarely entirely unintelligible back to something that actually exists, but is equally unintelligible.”

— Franz Grillparzer

176. “I would love to be able to write a tragedy in my imagination – it would turn into a masterpiece.”

— Franz Grillparzer

177. “Just as the queen bee, the highest-ranking, peerless creature of her hive, is surrounded by lowly drones to please her, whereas the workers produce honey, the same way is the one who sits on the throne an equal only to himself, and no one’s companion.”

— Franz Grillparzer

178. “Metaphysics must be based on what exists, for it has the task of explicating it.”

— Franz Grillparzer

179. “I love the pride whose measure is its own eminence and not the insignificance of someone else.”

— Franz Grillparzer

180. “If we notice a few errors in the work of a proven master, we may and even will often be correct; if we believe, however, that he is completely and utterly mistaken, we are in danger of missing his entire concept.”

— Franz Grillparzer

181. “Right and proof are two crutches for everything bent and crooked that limps along.”

— Franz Grillparzer

182. “Chance arrives unannounced. It emerges, and when it leaves, we are lucky if the changes it has produced are only external.”

— Franz Grillparzer

183. “I am a woman, and even if I could proceed with harshness and rigidity, it would disgust me nonetheless.”

— Franz Grillparzer

184. “The German mind, may it live! Almost invisible as a mind, it finally manifests itself assertively as a conviction.”

— Franz Grillparzer

185. “I’ve never been on good terms with God, but now I’m becoming His intimate, for He is truly absolute and extremely legitimate.”

— Franz Grillparzer

186. “A wise man can and should stand above his times, not so the poet, but he should be their apex.”

— Franz Grillparzer

187. “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.”

— Franz Grillparzer

188. “Bunglers and pedants judge art according to genre; they approve of this and dismiss that genre, but instead of genres, the open-minded connoisseur appreciates only individual works.”

— Franz Grillparzer

189. “It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.”

— Franz Grillparzer

190. “I notice well that one stray step from the habitual path leads irresistibly into a new direction. Life moves forward, it never reverses its course.”

— Franz Grillparzer

191. “Feeling and thinking are actually the blind man who carries the lame.”

— Franz Grillparzer

192. “Nothing genuinely historical was ever lost in this country. For this reason we have two ruling parties: villains and fools.”

— Franz Grillparzer

193. “Who claims that the heathen’s view of the world is incorrect? Life gives you nothing! It is ruled by false gods! Nothing remains true to you but your own self; provided you remain true to it.”

— Franz Grillparzer

194. “Boundless in your charity, but shrewd and cautious as a lender, you delight all those today whom you made beggars the day before.”

— Franz Grillparzer

195. “The thing that pleases is not always good and, helas, the good thing does not always please.”

— Franz Grillparzer

196. “The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”

— Franz Grillparzer

197. “Man lives two lives, woe, were it otherwise! One is seized by death, the other one, his honor, remains.”

— Franz Grillparzer

198. “Although your knowledge is weak and small, you need not be silent: since you cannot be judges be at least witnesses.”

— Franz Grillparzer

199. “Compilers resemble gluttonous eaters who devour excessive quantities of healthy food just to excrete them as refuse.”

— Franz Grillparzer

200. “In the long run, only woman remains true to mankind’s foremost mission. Whatever she achieves, she achieves through herself, and alone. Man’s master is the – public.”

— Franz Grillparzer