Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.
Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.
Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers.
Faust: Who holds the devil, let him hold him well, He hardly will be caught a second time.
two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, and each will wrestle for the mastery there.
A word spoken is a terrible thing when it suddenly utters what the heart has long allowed.
A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life.
Seldom in the business and transactions of ordinary life, do we find the sympathy we want.
If you want someone to develop a specific trait, treat them as though they already had it.
Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
The sickness of the heart is most easily got rid of by complaining and soothing confidence.
True happiness springs from moderation. [Ger., Aus Massigkeit entspringt ein reines Gluck.]
Help me to discover Thy truth, O Lord, and preserve me from those who have already found it
The force of a language does not consist of rejecting what is foreign but of swallowing it.
The arts are the salt of the earth; as salt relates to food, the arts relate to technology.
The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks
Paternity is based anyhow only upon conviction: I am convinced, therefore, I am the father.
A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.
The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.
We're only really thinking when we can't think out fully what we are really thinking about!
Do you want to live happily? Travel with two bags, one for giving, the other for receiving.
Don't give us your doubts, gives us your certainties, for we have doubts enough of our own.
If you are to accomplish all that one demands of you, you must overestimate your own worth.
Against great advantages in another, there are no means of defending ourselves except love.
The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom.
One's roused by this, another finds that fit: Each loves the play for what he brings to it.
He is the happiest man who can see the connection between the end and the beginning of life.
It is the fortunate who should extol fortune. [Ger., Das Gluck erhebe billig der Begluckte.]
We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.
He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.
Nature goes her own way, and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.
Many hammer all over the wall and believe that with each blow they hit the nail on the head.
There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.
Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena. They are themselves their own lesson.
The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.
Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and the we'll need no other light.
Mankind? That is an abstraction. There have always been and always will be only individuals.
Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.
The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.
Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.
Every decided colour does a certain violence to the eye, and forces the organ to opposition.
The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy.
All professional men are handicapped by not being allowed to ignore things which are useless.
All of us, just because we are able to talk, also believe we are able to talk about language.
Our passions are true phoenixes; as the old burn out the new straight rise up from the ashes.
Each traveler should know what he has to see, and what properly belongs to him, on a journey.
Whatever liberates our spirit, without also giving us mastery over ourselves, is destructive.
Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap.
Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude.
Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than malice and wickedness.