Quotes from Maria Edgeworth

Surely it is much more generous to forgive and remember, than to forgive and forget.

The human heart, at whatever age, opens only to the heart that opens in return.

It has been somewhere said by Johnson, that merely to invent a story is no small effort of the human understanding.

Though he had determined upon this in the first moment of joyful enthusiasm, yet the delay of four-and-twenty hours had made a material change in his feelings; his most virtuous resolves were always rather the effect of sudden impulse than of steady principle. But when the tide of passion had swept away the landmarks, he had no method of ascertaining the boundaries of right and wrong.

My dear, you will be woefully disappointed if in my story you expect any thing like a novel. I once heard a general say, that nothing was less like a review than a battle; and I can tell you that nothing is more unlike a novel than real life. Of all lives, mine has been the least romantic.