Part of that Power, not understood, Which always wills the Bad, and always works the Good.
I have spent the day well just looking and looking. It is the same in art as in life. The deeper one penetrates, the broader grows the view.
I treat my little heart like a sick child: whatever it wishes for is granted.
Of what importance is it that I have learned, with every schoolboy, that the world is round? Man needs but little earth for enjoyment, and still less for his final repose.
It is much easier to die than to bear a life of misery with fortitude.
He serves me somewhat darkly, now, I grant, Yet will he soon attain the light of reason.
My friend!” I exclaimed, “man is but man; and, whatever be the extent of his reasoning powers, they are of little avail when passion rages within, and he feels himself confined by the narrow limits of nature. It were better, then – but we will talk of this some other time,” I said, and caught up my hat. Alas! my heart was full; and we parted without conviction on either side. How rarely in this world do men understand each other! August.
Oh, man is so transient that even where he is really certain of his existence, even where he makes the one true impression of his presence, in the memory, in the soul of his dear ones, even there must he disappear, be extinguished, and that so soon!
Her presence, her fate, her sympathy for me, have power still to extract tears from my withered brain.
Consider a man confined within his bounds, influenced by impressions, beset by ideas, till one day a growing passion overthrows his contemplative composure and destroys him.
Tis order woman seeketh; freedom, man.
There is no higher or purer pleasure than to sit with closed eyes and hear a naturally expressive voice recite... a play of Shakespeare’s.
It makes me wretched, Wilhelm, to think that there should be men incapable of appreciating the few things which possess a real value in life.
Very often when we have found ourselves forever separated from what we had intended to achieve, we have already, on our way, found something else worth desiring.
Sometimes when we are talking she lays her hand upon mine, and in the eagerness of conversation comes closer to me, and her balmy breath reaches my lips, – when I feel as if lightning.
I possess so much, but my love for her absorbs it all. I possess so much, but without her I have nothing.
Mathematicians are a kind of Frenchman. They translate into their own language whatever is said to them and forthwith the thing is utterly changed.
If some people hadn’t felt obliged to repeat what is untrue simply because they had at one point maintained it, they would have turned into quite different people.
I treat my poor heart like a sick child, and gratify its every fancy. Do not mention this again: there are people who would censure me for it.
I do not pretend to aught worth knowing, I do not pretend I could be a teacher To help or convert a fellow-creature. Then, too, I’ve neither lands nor gold, Nor the world’s least pomp or honor hold – No dog would endure such a curst existence!