It is often wise to reveal that which cannot be concealed for long.
No emperor has the power to dictate to the heart.
The future comes slowly, the present flies and the past stands still forever.
Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men.
Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.
If you have never seen beauty in a moment of suffering, you have never seen beauty at all. If you have never seen joy in a beautiful face, you have never seen joy at all.
The gentlest man cannot live in peace if it does not please his wicked neighbor.
Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable – as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead.
O the eye’s light is a noble gift of Heaven! All beings live from light, each fair created thing; the very plants turn with a joyful transport to the light.
On dreary night let lusty sunshine fall.
Seraphs share with thee Knowledge; but Art, O Man, is thine alone!
Around, around, Companions all, take your ground, And name the bell with joy profound! CONCORDIA is the word we’ve found Most meet to express the harmonious sound, That calls to those in friendship bound.
Never the grave gives back what it has won!
Spring flies, and with it all the train it leads; and flowers, in fading, leave us but their seeds.
Pain is short, and joy is eternal.
The mountain cannot frighten one who was born on it.
As soon as I have begun to fear I have ceased to fear.
False fancy brings real misery.
Weep, for the light is dead.
Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops, as it advances, new necessities; the fetters of the physical close more tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent impulse toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life.