Maria Edgeworth Quotes

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.

Her son saw that the London mania was now stronger than ever upon her.

Let me not, even in my own mind, commit the injustice of taking a speck for the whole.

Those enemies to Ireland__those cruel absentees!

There need, at all events, be none of this, if people would but live upon their own estates, and kill their own mutton.

What a misfortune it is to be born a woman!… 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 us the new limits, the Gothic structure, the impenetrable barriers of our prison.

Come when you’re called; And do as you’re bid; Shut the door after you; And you’ll never be chid.

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?

I’ve a great fancy to see my funeral before I die.

Sir Patrick Rackrent lived and died a monument of old Irish hospitality.

Sir Patrick died that night__just as the company rose to drink his health with three cheers, he fell down in a sort of fit, and was carried off__they sat it out, and were surprised, on enquiry, in the morning, to find it was all over with poor Sir Patrick.

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.