Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Flowers are beautiful hieroglyphics of nature, with which she indicates how much she loves us.

When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself to be in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its own becoming and essence.

The day is of infinite length for him who knows how to appreciate and use it.

Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.

Know'st thou yesterday, its aim and reason? Workst thou will today for worthier things? Then calmly wait the morrows hidden season, And fear thou not, what hap soeer it brings

He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.

The world remains ever the same.

The Woman-Soul leadeth us upward and on!

That which is eternal in Woman lifts us above.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

Once one knows what really matters, one ceases to be voluble. And what does really matter? That is easy: thinking and doing, doing and thinking and these are the sum of all wisdom.... Both must move ever onward in life, to and fro, like breathing in and breathing out. 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.

And what does really matter? That is easy: thinking and doing, doing and thinking---and these are the sum of all wisdom.... Both must move ever onward in life, to and fro, like breathing in and breathing out.

When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.

No one should be rich except those who understand it.

The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it.

Words are good, but there is something better. The best is not to be explained by words. The spirit in which we act is the chief matter. Action can only be understood and represented by the spirit.

We cannot possess what we do not understand.

Truth is a torch but a tremendous one. That is why we hurry past it, shielding our eyes, indeed, in fear of getting burned.

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way as us.

All theory, dear friend, is grey, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.

Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing, and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.

Tomorrow sees undone, what happens not to-day; Still forward press, nor never tire! The possible, with steadfast trust, Resolve should be by the forelock grasp. Then she will neer let go her clasp, And labors on, because she must.

The passing day is prey to error. Time commands success and achievement

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

Dear friend, all theory is gray, And green the golden tree of life.

However often we turn to it [the Koran] at first disgusting us each time afresh, it soon attracts, astounds, and in the end enforces our reverence.... Its style, in accordance with its contents and aim is stern, grand, terrible - ever and anon truly sublime Thus this book will go on exercising through all ages a most potent influence.

From inaccessible mountain range by way of desert untrod by human foot to the ends of the unknown seas, the breath of the everlasting creative spirit is felt, rejoicing over every speck of dust that hearkens to it and lives.

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.

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.

Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life.

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

On the pinnacle of success man does not stand firm long.

There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.

Whoever strikes at marriage either by word or act undermines the foundation of all moral society.

He who is plenteously provided for from within needs but little from without.

I do not speak of what I cannot praise.

We must not hope to be mowers, And to gather the ripe gold ears, Unless we have first been sowers And water the furrows with tears. It is not just as we take it, This mystical world of ours, Lifes field will yield as we make it A harvest of thorns or of flowers.

Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow, He knows you not, ye heavenly Powers.

Who longs in solitude to live, Ah! soon his wish will gain: Men hope and love, men get and give, and leave him to his pain.

There is repetition everywhere, and nothing is found only once in the world.

Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you can imagine.

Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent. I therefore show you only the best works; and when you are grounded in these, you will have a standard for the rest, which you will know how to value, without overrating them.

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

Trust yourself, then you will know how to live.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is.

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door,and the whole world will be clean.

I always seek the good that is in people and leave the bad to Him who made mankind and knows how to round off the corners.

Science and art belong to the whole world, and the barriers of nationality vanish before them.

The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.

We can offer up much in the large, but to make sacrifices in little things is what we are seldom equal to.

Live dangerously and you live right.

A person can stand almost anything except a succession of ordinary days.

Since I have heard often enough that everyone in the end has his own religion, nothing seemed more natural to me than to fashion my own.

If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

The close and thoughtful observer more and more learns to recognize his limitations. He realizes that with the steady growth of knowledge more and more new problems keep on emerging.

Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.

Anecdotes and maxims are rich treasures to the man of the world, for he knows how to introduce the former at fit place in conversation.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

A purpose you impart is no longer your own.

A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent.

Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.

One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.

Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.

Nothing is worth more than this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach

Every man has enough power left to carry out that of which he is convinced.

One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that one knows.

To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed -- That can make life a garden. Different Translation To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us, even in silence, this makes our earthly ball a people garden.

Time does not relinquish its rights, either over human beings or over mountains.

One lives but once in the world.

I love those who yearn for the impossible.

People have a peculiar pleasure in making converts, that is, in causing others to enjoy what they enjoy, thus finding their own likeness represented and reflected back to them.

Without haste! without rest! Bind the motto to thy breast! Bear it with thee as a spell; Storm or sunshine, guard it well.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

If you inquire what people are like here, I must answer, 'The same as everywhere.'

He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

Over all the mountain tops is peace.

There is no patriotic art and no patriotic science

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

The sagacious reader who is capable of reading between these lines what does not stand written in them, but is nevertheless implied, will be able to form some conception.

The right man is the one who seizes the moment.

As our inclinations, so our opinions.

He who seizes the right moment, is the right man.

Take life too seriously, and what is it worth? If the morning wake us to no new joys, if the evening bring us not the hopes of new pleasures, is it worth while to dress and undress? Does the sun shine on me today that I may reflect on yesterday? That I may endeavor to foresee and control what can neither be foreseen nor controlled the destiny of tomorrow?

Nothing is more highly to be prized than the value of each day.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on how one looks at it.

Is not the core of nature in the heart of man?

There is no trifling with nature, it is always true, grave, and severe, it is always in the right, and the faults and errors fall to our share. It defies incompetency, but reveals its secrets to the competent, the truthful, and the pure.

Nature! We are enveloped and embraced by her, incapable of emerging from her and incapable of entering her more deeply. Unbidden and unwarned, she receives us into the circuits of her dance, drifting onward with us herself, until we grow tired and drop from her arms.

Nature goes her own way and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.

The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.

Open the second shutter, so that more light can come in.

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.

Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius is not immortal.

Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.

It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. But I am sure that figures show us whether it is being ruled well or badly.

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.

A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

The society of women is the element of good manners.

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.

A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-lantern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste for the next.

Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

The art of living rightly is like all arts: It must be learned and practiced with incessant care.

Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look around.

It is not doing the things we like to do, but liking the things we have to do that makes life blessed.

An unused life is an early death.

We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out discretion, and so disappears the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

Know'st thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom, Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket's gloom, Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows, And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose!

In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.

Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.

It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish.

What is not fully understood is not possessed.

Be generous with kindly words,especially about those who are absent.

I sometimes wonder whether our planet is the asylum of the universe for disordered minds.

He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.

What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality.

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Hypotheses are lullabies for teachers to sing their students to sleep.

Everything a human being wants can be divided into four components love, adventure, power and fame.

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

The history of mankind is his character.

The history of science is science itself; the history of the individual, the individual.

Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded.

Nine keys to contentment Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength enough to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbors. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.

What makes people happy is activity; changing evil itself into good by power, working in a God like manner.

The highest happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

Each has his own happiness in his hands, as the artist handles the rude clay he seeks to reshape it into a figure; yet it is the same with this art as with all others: only the capacity for it is innate; the art itself must be learned and painstakingly practiced.

A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.

Only learn to seize good fortune, for good fortune is always here.

It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

A distracted existence leads us to no goal.

The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.

No one feels himself easy in a garden which does not look like the open country.

A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.

The World is so empty if one thinks only of the mountains, rivers, and cities; but to know someone who thinks and feels with us,and who, though distant is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies teach us what we must do.

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

Only law can give us freedom.

I can promise to be frank, I cannot promise to be impartial.

If a good person does you wrong, act as though you had not noticed it. They will make note of this and not remain in your debt long.

Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and half-wise that are dangerous.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

Why should we not recognize in the lightning, the thunder, and the storm wind, the approach of an overwhelming Power, and in the scent of flowers and the gently rustling zephyr the presence of a Being full of love?

Faith is like private capital, stored in ones own house. It is like a public savings bank or loan office, from which individuals receive assistance in their days of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.

The further one advances in experience, the closer one comes to the unfathomable; the more one learns to utilize experience, the more one recognizes that the unfathomable is of no practical value.

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.

One ought, everyday at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

Every situation, every moment is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.

If you treat an individual as he is, he will stay as he is; but if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.

Enjoy what thou has inherited from thy sires if thou wouldn't really possess it. What we employ and use is never an oppressive burden; what the moment brings forth, that only can it profit by.

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whom timidity prevented from making a first effort.

Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.

Where there is much light, the shadow is deep.

You must either conquer and rule or lose and serve, suffer or triumph, and be the anvil or the hammer.

No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.

Commonplaceness, the surrender to the average, that good which is not bad but still the enemy of the best That is our besetting danger.

Choose well, your choice is brief, and yet endless.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

Genius develops in quiet places, Character out in the full current of human life.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Light, more light!

Human beings, by change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.

Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.

Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.

Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stand on the right spot; that it is securely founded; that it be successfully executed.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days.... What you can do or think you can do, begin it. For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it.

He is dead in this world who has no belief in another.

Belief is not the beginning of knowledge it is the end.

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

Oh how sweet it is to hear one's own convictions from another's lips.

Behavior is a mirror in which every one displays his own image.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

Money lost, something lost. Honor lost, much lost. Courage lost, everything lostbetter you were never born

Lose this day loitering, twill be the same story Tomorrow, and the rest more dilatory; Thus, indecision brings its own delays And days are lost lamenting over days, Are you in earnest? Seize this very moment; What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Courage has genius, power and magic in it; Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin it and the work will be completed.

The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence.

Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.

People who think honestly and deeply have a hostile attitude towards the public.

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

The fate of the architect is the strangest of all. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter.

Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.

I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it only finds us true children still.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

Before you can do something, you must first be something.

Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him, and which one perchance may safely twitch and pull, but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

Energy will do anything that can be done in the world: and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged animal a man without it.

Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.

They teach in academies far too many things, and far too much that is useless.

We know accurately only when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases.

It is only in misery that we recognize the hand of God leading good men to good.

If you want to make life easy, make it hard.

Difficulties increase the nearer we approach the goal.

The destiny of any nation, at any given time, depends on the opinions of its young men under five-and-twenty.

Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality.

While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

Deny yourself! You must deny yourself! That is the song that never ends.

By nature we have no defect that could not become a strength, no strength that could not become a defect.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten,

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

If you create something you must be something.

The coward threatens when he is safe.

There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. >From it springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.

A king there was once reigning, Who had a goodly flea, Him loved he without feigning, As his own son were he!

Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

I am the spirit that forever denies.

Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.

While man aspires, he errs.

You can, for you must.

Who rides so late through the night and storm? It is the father with his child.

All theory, dear friend, is gray; but the precious tree of life is green.

The act is all, the reputation nothing.

Architecture is frozen music.

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words.

Classicism is health, romanticism is sickness.

More Light!

Love has power to give in a moment what toil can scarcely reach in an age.

It is equally a mistake to hold one's self too high, or to rate one's self too cheap.

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

He who cannot love must learn to flatter.

He who does not think too much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

He who is firm in will molds the world to himself.

I have learned much from disease which life could have never taught me anywhere else.

In all things it is better to hope than to despair.

In the family where the father rules secure, there dwells the peace which thou wilt in vain seek for elsewhere in the wide world outside.

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.

It is the great triumph of genius to make the common appear novel.

It matters little whether a man be mathematically, or philologically, or artistically cultivated, so he be but cultivated.

Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

Life teaches us to be less severe with ourselves and others.

Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers!

Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.

Devote each day to the object then in time And every evening will find something done.

Literature is a fragment of a fragment; of all that ever happened, or has been said, but a fraction has been written, and of this but little is extant.

Ambition and love are the wings to great deeds.

A useless life is an early death.

Age makes us not childish, as some say; it finds us still true children.

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

And future deeds crowded round us As the countless stars in the night.

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but it is sure to repent every ill-judged outlay.

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.

Every step of life shows much caution is required.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

Difficulties increase the nearer we approach our goal.

Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.

Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again.

Existence is God!

Few have at once both thought and capacity for action. Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

Courage and modesty are the most unequivocal of virtues, for they are of a kind that hypocrisy cannot imitate; they too have this quality in common, that they are expressed by the same color.

True happiness springs from moderation.

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth.

The future hides in it gladness and sorrow.

The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

The ideal of beauty is simplicity and tranquility.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

The trouble is small, the fun is great.

There is nothing by which men display their character so much as in what they consider ridiculous...Fools and sensible men are equally innocuous. It is in the half fools and the half wise that the great danger lies.

The coward only threatens when he is safe.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence; The last result of wisdom stamps it true; He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

Wisdom is only found in truth.

Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow, - He knows ye not, ye gloomy Powers.

What we do not understand we do not possess.

What I possess I would gladly retain. Change amuses the mind, yet scarcely profits.

What government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Man supposes that he directs his life and governs his actions, when his existence is irretrievably under the control of destiny.

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

Alas! sorrow from happiness is oft evolved.

There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense And chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.

Man, be he who he may, experiences a last piece of good fortune and a last day.

The best fortune that can fall to a man is that which corrects his defects and makes up for his failings.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

On every mountain height Is rest.

One man's word is no man's word; we should quietly hear both sides.

Of all thieves fools are the worst; they rob you of time and temper.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, And attaches her curse to all inaction.

Nature goes on her way, and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.

Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it. Others do just the same with their time.

Our virtues and vices spring from one root.

Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth knowing, and what is not knowable.

The beginning of faith is the beginning of fruitfulness; But the beginning of unbelief, however glittering, is empty.

The absence of temptation is the absence of virtue.

Talent is nurtured in solitude; character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Only the heart without a stain knows perfect ease.

Since time is not a person we can overtake when he is past, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.

Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality.

Riches amassed in haste will diminish, but those collected by little and little will multiply.

Rest not! Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.

Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life! Each lives it, not to many is it known; and seize it where you will, it is interesting.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

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