Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.
Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.
He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.
The human mind will not be confined to any limits.
Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.
Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.
It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.
He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.
Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.
We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.
We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.
Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.
What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.
Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.
To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.
The little man is still a man.
The unnatural, that too is natural.
Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.
Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.
Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.
It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.
Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.
Love can do much, but duty more.
A useless life is an early death.
Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.
Wisdom is found only in truth.
Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.
Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.
To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.
Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.
If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.
Superstition is the poetry of life.
A person hears only what they understand.
There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.
Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.
Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
Mastery passes often for egotism.
I will listen to anyone's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.
To create something you must be something.
