If you want someone to develop a specific trait, treat them as though they already had it.
I have learned much from disease which life could have never taught me anywhere else.
The follies of the wise man are known to himself, but hidden from the world.
As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.
When you lose interest in anything, you also lose the memory for it.
Hatred is a heavy burden. It sinks the heart deep in the breast, and lies like a tombstone on all joys.
Art rests on a kind of religious sense, on a deep, steadfast earnestness; and on this account it unites so readily with religion.
Happy contractedness of youth, nay, of mankind in general, that they think neither of the high nor the deep, of the true nor the false, but only of what is suited to their own conceptions.
Painting predicates what man wants to see, and what man ought to see, not what he ordinarily sees.
The best way to understand a painting is by drawing it.
A state of true and universal tolerance is best ensured by leaving alone the peculiarities of men and peoples.
What sort of God would it be, who only pushed from without.
Wishes are premonitions of abilities.
If it is the greatest truth that you seek, the plants can direct you.
The important thing is not to know more than all men, but to know more at each moment than any particular man.
Let us seek to fathom those things that are fathomable and reserve those things which are unfathomable for reverence in quietude.
Higher aims are in themselves more valuable, even if unfulfilled, than lower ones quite attained.
A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.
Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.
For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter.