Maria Edgeworth Quotes

I just try to get out of my own way because if anyone is their own worst enemy, it's usually you.

A transposable aphorism is a malaise of the urge to be witty, or in other words, a maxim that is untroubled by the fact that the opposite of what it says is equally true so long as it appears to be funny.

For me, the most interesting people are ones who often work against their best interests. Bad choices. They go in directions where you go, 'No no no nooo!' You push away someone who is trying to love you, you hurt someone who's trying to get your trust, or you love someone you shouldn't.

It's always great to play a man who sets himself up to be punctured.

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

I'm my own worst enemy and I know that.

I like the irony in my work.

I am absolutely and inherently self-destructive in that I am always making sure I'm doing what I want to do.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

Don’t get in the way when your opponents are destroying themselves.

I'm my own worst enemy.

I think I'm my own worst enemy.

Why, since we are always complaining of our ills, are we constantly employed in redoubling them?

Wit, to be well defined, must be defined by wit itself; then it will be worth listening to.

To some kind of men their graces serve them but as enemies.

Every witticism is an inexact thought; that which is perfectly true is imperfectly witty.

You have a... remarkable memory." "I remember everything about you. You're the one who wasn't paying attention.

The impatient man is his own enemy; he slams the door on his own progress.

We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.

Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, that the wisest of us all, should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.

The essence of the ludicrous consists in surprise,--in unexpected terms of feeling and explosions of thought,--often bringing dissimilar things together with a shock; as when some wit called Boyle, the celebrated philosopher, the father of chemistry and brother of the Earl of Cork.

Truth, when witty, is the wittiest of all things.

Man has no greater enemy than himself. I have acted contrary to my sentiments and inclination; throughout our whole lives we do what we never intended, and what we proposed to do, we leave undone.

Math was always my bad subject. I couldn't convince my teachers that many of my answers were meant ironically.

You can always find contradictions and hope, in hopeless circumstances, and a sense of redemption in somebody who makes the same mistake, over and over. So far, so good. That's how I put it.