Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

There is no knowledge for which so great a price is paid as a knowledge of the world; and no one ever…

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Bores: People who talk of themselves, when you are thinking only of yourself.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Friends are the thermometer by which we may judge the temperature of our fortunes.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Thoughts come maimed and plucked of plumage from the lips, which, from the pea, in the silence of your own leisure and…

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

People are always willing to follow advice when it accords with their own wishes.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Society punishes not the vices of its members, but their detection.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Superstition is but the fear of belief.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Women excel more in literary judgment than in literary production,--they are better critics than authors.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

We have a reading, a talking, and a writing public. When shall we have a thinking?

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Society seldom forgives those who have discovered the emptiness of its pleasures, and who can live independent of it and them.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

There are some chagrins of the heart which a friend ought to try to console without betraying a knowledge of their existence,…

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Haste is always ungraceful.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant; democracy, to many.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

A profound knowledge of life is the least enviable of all species of knowledge, because it can only be acquired by trials…

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Mediocrity is beneath a brave soul.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Praise is the only gift for which people are really grateful.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

When we find that we are not liked, we assert that we are not understood; when probably the dislike we have excited…

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Calumny is the offspring of Envy.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Love in France is a comedy; in England a tragedy; in Italy an opera seria; and in Germany a melodrama.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

The difference between weakness and wickedness is much less than people suppose; and the consequences are nearly always the same.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

You were wise not to waste years in a lawsuit ... he who commences a suit resembles him who plants a palm-tree…

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

Wit lives in the present, but genius survives the future.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

The infirmities of genius are often mistaken for its privileges.

— Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington