Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The close and thoughtful observer more and more learns to recognize his limitations. He realizes that with the steady growth of knowledge more and more new problems keep on emerging.
Energy is the basis of everything. Every Jew, no matter how insignificant, is engaged in some decisive and immediate pursuit of a goal... It is the most perpetual people of the earth.
It is said, that no one is a hero to their butler. The reason is, that it requires a hero to recognize a hero. The butler, however, will probably know well how to estimate his equals.
Oh happy he who still can hope in our day to breathe the truth while plunged in seas of error! What we don't know is really what we need, and what we know is of no use to us whatever!
The few of understanding, vision rare, Who veiled not from the herd their hearts, but tried, Poor generous fools, to lay their feelings bare, Them have men always burnt and crucified.
Woe to falsehood! it affords no relief to the breast, like truth; it gives us no comfort, pains him who forges it, and like an arrow directed by a god flies back and wounds the archer.
I have, alas! Philosophy, Medicine, Jurisprudence too, And to my cost Theology, With ardent labor, studied through. And here I stand, with all my lore, Poor fool, no wiser than before.
Alas, I have studied philosophy, the law as well as medicine, and to my sorrow, theology; studied them well with ardent zeal, yet here I am, a wretched fool, no wiser than I was before.
What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men, and then they choose to call themselves miserable.
I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strenght, happiness & misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own
Mathematics can remove no prejudices and soften no obduracy. It has no influence in sweetening the bitter strife of parties, and in the moral world generally its action is perfectly null.
All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.
We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out discretion, and so disappears the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.
A great artist... must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.
The child, offered the mother's breast, Will not in the beginning grab it; But soon it clings to it with zest. And thus at wisdom's copious breasts You'll drink each day with greater zest.
Happy contractedness of youth, nay, of mankind in general, that they think neither of the high nor the deep, of the true nor the false, but only of what is suited to their own conceptions.
Each one of us must carry within the proof of immortality, it cannot be given from outside of us. To be sure, everything in natureis change but behind the change there is something eternal.
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
Let no one be ashamed to say yes today if yesterday he said no. Or to say no today if yesterday he said yes. For that is life. Never to have changed-what a pitiable thing of which to boast!
I have heard myself accused of being an opponent, an enemy of mathematics, which no one can value more highly than I, for it accomplishes the very thing whose achievement has been denied me.
The bad thing is that thinking about thought doesn't help at all; one has to have it from nature so that the good ideas appear before us like free children of God calling to us: Here we are.
And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life-- and the friends who are about me whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence.
It is always a sign of an unproductive time when it concerns itself with petty and technical aspects [in philology], and likewiseit is a sign of an unproductive person to pursue such trifles.
Courage and modesty are the most unequivocal of virtues, for they are of a kind that hypocrisy cannot imitate; they too have this quality in common, that they are expressed by the same color.
He who only tastes his error will long dwell with it, will take delight in it as in a singular felicity; while he who drains it to the dregs will, if he be not crazy, find it to be what it is.
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.
To be sure, we have inherited abilities, but our development we owe to thousands of influences coming from the world around us from which we appropriate what we can and what is suitable to us.
Sometimes I don't understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!
There is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction.
With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.
It is much easier to meet with error than to find truth; error is on the surface, and can be more easily met with; truth is hid in great depths, the way to seek does not appear to all the world.
An angel! Nonsense! Everybody so describes his mistress; and yet I find it impossible to tell you how perfect she is, or why she is so perfect: suffice it to say she has captivated all my senses.
A resolution that is communicated is no longer within thy power; thy attentions become now the plaything of chance; he who would have his commands certainly carried out must take man by surprise.
Reason looks at necessity as the basis of the world; reason is able to turn chance in your favor and use it. Only by having reasonremain strong and unshakable can we be called a god of the earth.
The further one advances in experience, the closer one comes to the unfathomable; the more one learns to utilize experience, the more one recognizes that the unfathomable is of no practical value.
If the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once by a contradiction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression, an interruption, and all the thousand tricks of conversation.
Man usually believes, if only words he hears, That also with them goes material for thinking. [Ger., Gewohnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hort, Es musse sich dabei doch auch was denken.]
The useful may be trusted to further itself, for many produce it and no one can do without it; but the beautiful must be specially encouraged, for few can present it, while yet all have need of it.
Age childish makes, they say, but 'tis not true; We're only genuine children still in Age's season. [Ger., Das Alter macht nicht kindisch, wie man spricht, Es findet uns nur noch als wahre Kinder.]
Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.
Ah, how often I've cursed those foolish pages, That showed my youthful sufferings to everyone! If Werther had been my brother, and I'd killed him, His sad ghost could hardly have persecuted me more.
To appear at church every Sunday; to look down upon, and let himself be looked at for an hour by the congregation, is the best means of becoming popular which can be recommended to a young sovereign.
Words are good, but there is something better. The best cannot be explained by words. The spirit in which we act is the chief matter. Action can only be only understood and represented by the spirit.
Only that type of story deserves to be called moral that shows us that one has the power within oneself to act, out of the conviction that there is something better, even against one's own inclination.
This world could not exist if it were not so simple. The ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again.
A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-lantern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste for the next.
The soul is indestructible and its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set at night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.
I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.
One is never satisfied with a portrait of persons whom one knows. That is why I have always pitied portraitists. One demands so seldom of others the impossible, but demands just that of the portraitists.
Life seems so vulgar, so easily content with the commonplace things of every day, and yet it always nurses and cherishes certain higher claims in secret, and looks about for the means of satisfying them.