Quote collection
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"Whatever we think out, whatever we take in hand to do, should be perfectly and finally finished, that the world, if it must alter, will only have to spoil it; we have then nothing to do but unite the severed, to recollect and restore the dismembered."
"I reverence the individual who understands distinctly what he wishes; who unweariedly advances, who knows the means conducive to his object, and can seize and use them."
"Every individual who is not creative has a negative, narrow, exclusive taste and succeeds in depriving creative being of its energy and life."
"As to the value of conversions, God alone can judge. God alone can know how wide are the steps which the soul has to take before it can approach to a community with Him, to the dwelling of the perfect, or to the intercourse and friendship of higher natures."
"Superstition belongs to the essence of mankind and takes refuge, when one thinks one has suppressed it completely, in the strangest nooks and crannies; once it is safely ensconced there, it suddenly reappears."
"One criticizes the English for carrying their teapots wherever they go, even lugging them up Mount Etna. But doesn't every nationhave its teapot, in which, even when traveling, it brews the dried bundles of herbs brought from home?"
"One needs only to get old to become milder; I don't see anyone make a mistake I hadn't also made."
"As soon as you are in a social setting, you better take away the key to the lock of your heart and pocket it; those who leave thekey in the lock are fools."
"New inventions can and will be made; however, nothing new can be thought of that concerns moral man. Everything has already been thought and said which at best we can express in different forms and give new expressions to."
"For usually people resist as long as they can to dismiss the fool they harbor in their bosom, they resist to confess a major mistake or to admit a truth that makes them despair."
"One must not criticize that which is common since it remains always the same."
"No matter what one says, you can recognize only those matters that are equal to you. Only rulers who possess extraordinary abilities will recognize and esteem properly extraordinary abilities in their subjects and servants."
"Are we not also married to conscience which we would love to get rid of often enough since it is more bothersome than a man or a woman ever could become?"
"When married one has to get into an argument once in a while since in this way one learns about the other."
"If one doesn't know one's own country, one doesn't have standards for foreign countries."
"Certain faults are necessary for the existence of the individual. We would resent it if old friends were to get rid of certain peculiarities."
"For a brave man deserves a well-endowed girl. [Ger., Denn ein wackerer Mann verdient ein begutertes Madchen.]"
"Beloved brother, let us not forget that man can never get away from himself. [Ger., Lass uns, geliebter Bruder, nicht vergessen, Dass von sich selbst der Mensch nicht scheiden kann.]"
"Where confidence is wanting, the most beautiful flower in the garland of love is missing."
"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."