Our earthly ball a peopled garden.
One does not get to know that one exists until one rediscovers oneself in others.
Toleration ought in reality to be merely a transitory mood. It must lead to recognition. To tolerate is to affront.
Everything which is properly business we must keep carefully separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freed handling.
Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the right road.
Noble be man, helpful and good!
Let your trouble be Light will follow dark Though the heaven falls You may hear the lark.
Like the star that shines afar, Without haste and without rest, Let each one wheel with steady sway Round the task that rules the day, And do their best.
The universal subjugator, the commonplace.
A vi’let on the meadow grew, That no one saw, that no one knew, It was a modest flower. A shepherdess pass’d by that way – Light footed, pretty and so gay; That way she came, Softly warbling forth her lay.
Music, in the best sense, does not require novelty; nay, the older it is, and the more we are accustomed to it, the greater its effect.
This world could not exist if it were not so simple. The ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again.
Great passions are incurable diseases.
The passions are like those demons with which Afrasahiab sailed down the Orus. Our only safety consists in keeping them asleep. If they we are lost.
What makes poetry? A full heart, brimful of one noble passion.
All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.
What have the Germans gained by their boasted freedom of the press, except the liberty of abusing each other as they like?
Originality provokes originality.
Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world.
Normally, the sciences distance themselves from life and the return to it via a detour.