"What government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves."
"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."
"I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should."
"The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art."
"If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own."
"Men in a state of nature, uncivilized nations, children, have a great fondness for colors in their utmost brightness, and especially for yellow-red."
"God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom."
"The highest happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable."
"The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks."
"A man's errors are what make him amiable."
"How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking; always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to."
"Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean."
"It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish."
"Love concedes in a moment what we can hardly attain by effort after years of toil."
"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."
"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."
"Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it."
"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."
"Difficulties increase the nearer we approach our goal."
"What is not fully understood is not possessed."
"Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow."
"Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator."
"Energy will do anything that can be done in this world."
"For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is."
"If I love you, what business is it of yours?"