dots-menu
×

Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  Grillparzer

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Grillparzer

As the youth lives in the future, so the man lives with the past; no one knows rightly how to live in the present.

Den Menschen Liebe, den Göttern Ehrfurcht—To men, affection; to gods, reverence.

For men cherish love, for gods reverence.

Glücklich, glücklich nenn’ ich den / Dem des Daseins letzte Stunde / Schlägt in seiner Kinder Mitte—Happy! happy call I him the last hour of whose life strikes in the midst of his children.

Happy he whose last hour strikes in the midst of his children.

It is easy to give offence, though it is hard to appease.

It is only when it is bent that the bow shows its strength.

Man steigt nicht ungestraft vom Göttermahle / Herunter in den Kreis der Sterblichen—One does not descend from a banquet with the gods into a company of common mortals without suffering for it.

Nur eine Schmach weiss ich auf dieser Erde. / Und die heisst: Unrecht thun—Only one disgrace know I in this world, and that is doing wrong.

O dass die Weisheit halb so eifrig wäre / Nach Schülern und Bekehrten, als der Spott—Oh, that Wisdom were half as zealous for disciples and converts as Ridicule is.

The fetters of the slave bind the hands only.

The magic power of love consists in its ennobling whatever its breath touches, like the sun whose golden ray transmutes even thunderclouds into gold.

The moment which is the cradle of the future is also the grave of the past.

Vanity and coarse pride give gold; friendship and love give flowers.

Willst du mit Kinderhänden / In des Schicksals Speichen greifen? / Seines Donnerwagens Lauf / Hält kein sterblich Wesen auf—Wilt thou clutch the spokes of destiny with thy child’s hands? The course of its car of thunder no mortal hand can stay.