Quote collection
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"The web of this world is woven of Necessity and Chance. Woe to him who has accustomed himself from his youth up to find something necessary in what is capricious, and who would ascribe something like reason to Chance and make a religion of surrendering to it."
"He who is wise puts aside all claims which may dissipate his attention, and confining himself to one branch excels in that."
"Thank God when he oppresses you, and again when he releases you."
"There is nothing more frightful than for a teacher to know only what his scholars are intended to know."
"Alas, I have studied philosophy, the law as well as medicine, and to my sorrow, theology; studied them well with ardent zeal, yet here I am, a wretched fool, no wiser than I was before."
"Commonplaceness, the surrender to the average, that good which is not bad but still the enemy of the best - That is our besetting danger."
"Colour itself is a degree of darkness."
"Most man only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence."
"As our inclinations, so our opinions."
"How can one learn to know oneself? Never by introspection, rather by action."
"All understanding begins in wonder!"
"As beauteous is the world, and many a joy Floats through its wide dominion. But, alas, When we would seize the winged good, it flies."
"The highest happiness, the purest joys of life, wear out at last."
"Women are silver dishes into which we put golden apples."
"Profoundness, genius, spontaneity, merit, nobility, ingenuity, voice propriety, feeling, discernment, sensibility, good taste, great tone, rightness, courtliness, vivacity, boldness, style, freshness, harmony, perfection, imagination, purity, correctness. The greatest writer of all times. God's most astonishing creation."
"When I say to the Moment flying; 'Linger a while -- thou art so fair!' Then bind me in thy bonds undying, And my final ruin I will bear!"
"I bid the chords sweet music make, And all must follow in my wake."
"It has ever been my fate to give pain to those whose happiness I should have promoted."
"A man avails himself of the truth so long as it is serviceable; but he seizes on what is false with a passionate eloquence as soon as he can make a momentary use of it."
"It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth."