Franz Grillparzer Quotes

I try to catch at many a tuneLike petals of light fallen from the moon,Broken and bright on a dark lagoon,But they float away - for who can holdYouth, or perfume or the moon's gold?

Time wastes too fast : every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen ; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more -- every thing presses on -- whilst thou are twisting that lock, -- see! it grows grey ; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make!

Time, you old gypsy man, will you not stay, put up your caravan just for one day?

Touch us gently, Time! Let us glide adown thy stream, Gently, - as we sometimes glide Through a quiet dream!

Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship's wake.

Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they're preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them. Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants.

Can the life of the time be caught in an advertisement? Is that how it is, really, in the meadows of the world?

Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it.

Reflect, ere you spurn me, that youth at his sides Wears wings; and once gone, all pursuit he derides.

... it occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can.

What is meant by reality? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable - now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying

Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.

The Hour-Hand of Life --- Life consists of rare, isolated moments of the greatest significance, and of innumerably many intervals, during which at best the silhouettes of those moments hover about us. Love, springtime, every beautiful melody, mountains, the moon, the sea - all these speak completely to the heart but once, if in fact they ever do get a chance to speak completely. For many men do not have those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and intermissions in the symphony of real life.

... the random talk of people who have no chance of immortality and thus can speak their minds out has a setting, often, of lights, streets, houses, human beings, beautiful or grotesque, which will weave itself into the moment for ever.

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat: They took some honey, and plenty of money Wrapped up in a five-pound note. . . They dined on mince and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon, The moon, The moon, They danced by the light of the moon.

Time's horses gallop down the lessening hill.

Exhaust the little moment / Soon it dies.

I could not prove the Years had feet-/Yet confident they run.

Life moves out of a red flare of dreams Into a common light of common hours, Until old age brings the red flare again.

Time runs and flows and only our death succeeds in catching up with it. Photography is a blade which, in eternity, impales the dazzling moment.

Time is a stream which glides smoothly on and is past before we know.

Years rolled on again, and Wendy had a daughter. This ought not to be written in ink but in a golden splash.

For I could not read or speak and on the long nights I could not turn the moon off or count the lights of cars across the ceiling.