A man’s shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.
Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Just begin and the mind grows heated; continue, and the task will be completed!
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.
What right those who govern have to govern they don’t question, they just govern. Whether the people have a right to depose them that doesn’t concern them. All they are concerned with is that the people will not be tempted to depose them.
All of us have life; few of us have an idea of it.
An absent friend gives us friendly company when we are well assured of his happiness.
Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome. Every beginning is cheerful: the threshold is the place of expectation.
A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.