If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what...

When glance turns To a sky-blue clear day,When the purplr-red sunSinks low at sirocco,Here nature bestows glory,Joy, sound to eye and heart,And we find in color lore,The universal truth. – – – GER:Wenn der Blick...

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.

Each one’s no longer consciousOf the high wall, or the rest:Since the one enduring fortress,Is the soldier’s iron breast.If you’d live unconquered,Quickly arm, and fight the real foe:Every wife an Amazon bred,And every child a...

Rest not. Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.

A man’s errors are what make him amiable

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

Seldom in the business and transactions of ordinary life, do we find the sympathy we want.

To measure up to all that is demanded of him, a man must overestimate his capacities

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

The world remains ever the same.

One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a human.

There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternally new now that builds and creates itself out of the Best as the past withdraws.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

Whether a person shows themselves to be a genius in science or in writing a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, or the deed, is living and can live on.

‘Know thyself’? If I knew myself, I’d run away.

Napoleon for the sake of a good name broke in pieces half the world.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.

The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks

It is delivery that makes the orators success.

The man of understanding finds everything laughable

There is nothing more frightful than imagination without taste.

Men grieve [Mephistopheles] so with the days of their lamenting, [he] even hate[s] to plague them with [his] torments.

Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.

Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome.

nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

Who are you then?” “I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.

Gracious Providence, to whom I owe all my powers, why didst thou not withhold some of those blessings I possess, and substitute in their place a feeling of self-confidence and contentment?

If any man wishes to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts.

Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.

Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?

All that is noble is in itself of a quiet nature, and appears to sleep until it is aroused and summoned forth by contrast.

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

Each has his own happiness in his hands, as the artist handles the rude clay he seeks to reshape it into a figure; yet it is the same with this art as with all others:...

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

No one should be rich except those who understand it.

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

There is no better deliverance from the world than through art; and a man can form no surer bond with it than through art

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.

There is repetition everywhere, and nothing is found only once in the world.

Superstition is poetry of life, so that it does not injure the poet to be superstitious

Everything great and intelligent is in the minority

A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.

For in music there is no material to be deducted.

To end the greatest work designed,A thousand hands need but one mind.

schade dass die Natur nur einen Mensch aus dir schuf / denn zum wurdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff” (loose translation: nature, alas, made only one being out of you although there was...