Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing as you mentioned in your letter, so that I might have something to press against my heart.
If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
All that is transitory is but a metaphor.
He who moves not forward, goes backward.
Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.
To live within limits. To want one thing. Or a few things very much and love them dearly. Cling to them, survey them from every angle. Become one with them – that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being.
The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.
Night is the other half of life, and the better half.
What we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction makes us productive.
Doubt can only be removed by action.
Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast. – Without haste, but without rest.
God help us – for art is long, and life so short.
Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.
Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless.
Everything is hard before it is easy.
There is strong shadow where there is much light.
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.
Sometimes I don’t understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!
Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: because it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want.