Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Right and proof are two crutches for everything bent and crooked that limps along.
The graceful flowers of innocence are more valuable than the laurel crown of fame.
The present is never poetic as it serves necessity, necessity, however, is prosaic.
The ideas of an age are most abundant where they are not crowded by original ideas.
Do hurry and proclaim the concordat. Then castrate yourselves to keep from sinning.
It's actually the spirit helping the spirit; it is the doctor, the bed, the potion.
Love wants to be confirmed with concrete symbols, but recklessness loves instability.
It is fair to despise a cowardly man, but the female sex is strongest when it's weak.
Why do villains have so much influence? Because the honest people are terribly dense.
The most irascible person is most likely to become apathetic in dangerous situations.
Much as I honor the wisdom of the princess--there is something more dashing about a man.
There shall be no slave in your home, male or female: Least of all the mother of your son.
What raises great poetry above all else--it is the entire person and also the entire world.
The thing that pleases is not always good and, helas, the good thing does not always please.
Do not push so fast ahead, do slow down a bit! Otherwise you won't catch up with yourselves.
Do old people always live in the past? What yesterday was firm and true, may not be so today.
The noble woman is half a man, even a complete one. Only their imperfections make them women.
Gold is the gift of vanity and common pride, but flowers are the gift of love and friendship.
Piety is the fermentation of the forming mind and the putrefaction of the disintegrating one.
A wise man can and should stand above his times, not so the poet, but he should be their apex.
The verdict on Prince Metternich will soon be out: An excellent diplomat and a bad politician.
I love the pride whose measure is its own eminence and not the insignificance of someone else.
I would love to be able to write a tragedy in my imagination--it would turn into a masterpiece.
If someone were to think that trees are made to support the sky, they would all seem too short.
In Germany, a certain artistic sense is fairly common, but the artist's sense is foreign there.
Man will return to his origins. Goethe has finally become as squiggly as the city of his fathers.
Before passing different laws for different people, I'd relinquish myself unto you as your slave.
When receiving an order, many servants repeat their "yes" numerous times, especially the lazy ones.
A person who looks different all the time frightens me. Only one animal changes its skin: the snake.
A pious woman's neighbor, a philanthropist's child, a liberal's servant--these three have a hard life.
Swear words and profanities are mere abbreviations of speech, similar to the abbreviations in writing.
To enlist the support of the people and of parliament, you only have to propose a profitable villainy.
When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet's task to turn it into an audience.
Our poetry emulates the recent progress in military strategy: Our army's strength is the foot soldiers.
Man lives two lives, woe, were it otherwise! One is seized by death, the other one, his honor, remains.
I am a woman, and even if I could proceed with harshness and rigidity, it would disgust me nonetheless.
Art is eternally young, but the poet ages. If only he remained as young as art! If only it aged with him!
Once you have looked at the land from atop the Kahlenberg, you will understand what I write and who I am.
To test a modest man's modesty do not investigate if he ignores applause, find out if he abides criticism.
Moons and years pass by and are gone forever, but a beautiful moment shimmers through life a ray of light.
The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child's delight in bright pictures.
No shortcomings of other people cause us to be more intolerant than those which are caricatures of our own.
The Germans believe that, no matter where, they can get by on knowledge alone. Art, however, requires skill.
I look around me and nowhere do I see a stamp of disapproval with which nature marked a woman's candid brow.
I'd wish the government took honest people into consideration, it shows enough consideration for scoundrels.
Drink and be thankful to the host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need it.
Our age believed herself pregnant with auspicious progeny, but when her hour came, it turned out to be dropsy.
As youth lives in the future, so the adult lives in the past: No one rightly knows how to live in the present.
To declaim freedom verses seems like a poem within a poem; freedom requires guns, it requires arms, but no feet.
Isn't it awful that cold feet make for a cold imagination and that a pair of woollen socks induce good thoughts!