What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.
Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.
What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.
The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.
Waste not a day in vain digression; with resolute, courageous trust seek every possible impression and make it firmly your posession you’ll then work on because you must.
In the colorful reflection we have what is life.
Faust: Who holds the devil, let him hold him well, He hardly will be caught a second time.
To be loved for what one is, that is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him; their own selves, their version of him.
I wait for the morning of my tears.
The highest goal that man can achieve is amazement.
A word spoken is a terrible thing when it suddenly utters what the heart has long allowed.
People who think honestly and deeply have a hostile attitude towards the public.
It is better to do the smallest thing in the world than to hold half an hour to be too small a thing.
To be pleased with one’s limits is a wretched state.
The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims.
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
Every situation – nay, every moment – is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.
One can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.
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.
Once I blazed across the sky, Leaving trails of flame; I fell to earth, and here I lie – Who’ll help me up again? -A Shooting Star.