Quote collection
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"Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words."
"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."
"It is not given to us to grasp the truth, which is identical with the divine, directly. We perceive it only in reflection, in example and symbol, in singular and related appearances. It meets us as a kind of life which is incomprehensible to us, and yet we cannot free ourselves from the desire to comprehend it."
"Perseverance is a silent power that grows irresistibly greater with time."
"We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like."
"The safest thing is always to try to convert everything that is in us and around us into action; let the others talk and argue about it as they please."
"Voluntary dependence is the wonderful form of existence, and how could that be possible without love?"
"Love grants in a moment What toil can hardly achieve in an age. [Ger., In einem Augenblick gewahrt die Liebe Was Muhe kaum in langer Zeit erreicht.]"
"It is much easier to meet with error than to find truth; error is on the surface, and can be more easily met with; truth is hid in great depths, the way to seek does not appear to all the world."
"You'll never attain it unless you know the feeling."
"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."
"Necessity is cruel, but it is the only test of inward strength. Every fool may live according to his own likings."
"Mozart is a human incarnation of the divine force of creation."
"Gray is the color of all theory"
"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."
"Napoleon for the sake of a good name broke in pieces half the world."
"Gifts come from above in their own peculiar forms."
"It is the great triumph of genius to make the common appear novel."
"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."
"Normally, people believe that, if they hear just words, that these words must lead to some thought."