He that marries is like the dogs who was married to the Adriatic. He knows not what there is in that which he marries; mayhap treasures and pearls, mayhap monsters and tempests, await him.
Nothing is more futile than theorizing about music. No doubt there are laws, mathematically strict laws, but these laws are not music; they are only its conditions? The essence of music is revelation.
Man, – the aristocrat amongst the animals.
Lyrical poetry is much the same an every age, as the songs of the nightingales in every spring-time.
Our souls must become expanded by the contemplation of Nature’s grandeur, before we can fully comprehend the greatness of man.
God has given us speech in order that we may say pleasant things to our friends, and tell bitter truths to our enemies.
Everywhere that a great soul gives utterance to its thoughts, there also is a Golgotha.
Thought is invisible nature.
Terrible as is war, it yet displays the spiritual grandeur of man daring to defy his mightiest hereditary enemy – death.
Pretty women without religion are like flowers without perfume.
I bequeath all my property to my wife on the condition that she remarry immediately. Then there will be at least one man to regret my death.
The real madness probably is not another thing that the wisdom itself that, tired of discovering the shames of the world, has taken the intelligent resolution to become mad.
Since the Exodus, freedom has always spoken with a Hebrew accent.
Reform Judaism is like mock turtle soup-turtle soup without the turtle.
The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.
The fountain of love is the rose and the lily, the sun and the dove.
My heart resembles the ocean; has storm, and ebb and flow; and many a beautiful pearl lies hid in its depths below.
The arrow belongs not to the archer when it has once left the bow; the word no longer belongs to the speaker when it has once passed his lips, especially when it has been multiplied by the press.
The gazelles so gentle and clever Skip lightly in frolicsome mood.
It is only kindred griefs that draw forth our tears, and each weeps really for himself.