The violets prattle and titter, And gaze on the stars high above.
Glow-worms on the ground are moving, As if in the torch-dance circling.
What Christian love cannot do is effected by a common hatred.
You talk of our having an idea; we do not have an idea. The idea has us, and martyrs us, and scourges us, and drives us into the arena to fight and die for it, whether we want to or not.
Photography is a witness against the mistaken opinion that art is an imitation of nature.
If thou lookest on the lime-leaf, Thou a heart’s form will discover; Therefore are the lindens ever Chosen seats of each fond lover.
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.
And over the pond are sailing Two swans all white as snow; Sweet voices mysteriously wailing Pierce through me as onward they go. They sail along, and a ringing Sweet melody rises on high; And when the swans begin singing, They presently must die.
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.