Everything transitory is but an image.

If you’ve never eaten while crying you don t know what life tastes like.

The Church has an excellent appetite. She has swallowed whole countries and the questionHas never risen of indigestion. Only the Church . . . can take Ill-gotten goods without stomach-ache!

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

You are aware of only one unrest;Oh, never learn to know the other!Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,And one is striving to forsake its brother.Unto the world in grossly loving zest,With clinging tendrils,...

The things I know, every man can know, but, oh, my heart is mine alone!

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

A leaf that is destined to grow large is full of grooves and wrinkles at the start. Now if one has no patience and wants it smooth offhand like a willow leaf, there is trouble...

The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new, but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before

It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish.

To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed that can make life a garden.

There is no crime of which I do not deem myself capable.

We eagerly get hold of a law that serves as a weapon to our passions.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

It is in self-imitation that a master first shows himself.

He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.

Judge a man’s character by what he finds ridiculous.

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence.

We can’t form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

All greatness in the world came about because someone did more than he had to do.

I can promise to be sincere, but not to be impartial

Girls we love for what they are; men for what they promise to be.

Being full of mischief, they love to listen;they gladly obey, for they like to betray you,pretending to be sent from Heaven,and lisping like angels, while they lie.

Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere...

Colors are light’s suffering and joy

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way...

What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?

In Bibliotheken fühlt man sich wie in Gegenwart eines großen Kapitals, das geräuschlos unberechenbare Zinsen spendet.

He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.

You don’t have to travel around the world to understand that the sky is blue everywhere

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

Everywhere, we learn only from those whom we love.

Nothing is worth more than this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach

The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.

One never goes so far as when one doesn’t know where one is going

Science arose from poetry… when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

Enjoy what thou has inherited from thy sires if thou wouldn’t really possess it. What we employ and use is never an oppressive burden; what the moment brings forth, that only can it profit by.

Nothing hurts a new truth more than an old error

The happy do not believe in miracles

Oral delivery aims at persuasion and making the listener believe they are converted. Few persons are capable of being convinced; the majority allow themselves to be persuaded.

We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

We know accurately only when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases

There is nothing in the world more pitiable than an irresolute man, oscillating between two feelings, who would willingly unite the two and who does not perceive that nothing can unite them

Alas! sorrow from happiness is oft evolved.

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part – yet nothing in...

All force strives forward to work far and wideTo live and grow and ever to expand;Yet we are checked and thwarted on each sideBy the world’s flux and swept along like sand:In this internal storm...