"While the womanly god demands our veneration, the godlike woman kindles our love; but while we allow ourselves to melt in the celestial loveliness, the celestial self-sufficiency holds us back in awe."

"The Greeks put us to shame not only by their simplicity, which is foreign to our age; they are at the same time our rivals, nay, frequently our models, in those very points of superiority from which we seek comfort when regretting the unnatural character of our manners. We see that remarkable people uniting at once fullness of form and fullness of substance, both philosophising and creating, both tender and energetic, uniting a youthful fancy to the virility of reason in a glorious humanity."

"Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators."

"He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times."

"Life is earnest, art is gay."

"Whatever is not forbidden is permitted."

"What is the short meaning of the long speech?"

"Der Krieg ernährt den Krieg."

"My son, there's nothing insignificant, Nothing! But yet in every earthly thing First and most principal is place and time."

"The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The power, the beauty, and the majesty That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and watery depths, — all these have vanished; They live no longer in the faith of reason."

"In thy breast are the stars of thy fate."

"You say it as you understand it."

"When the wine goes in, strange things come out."

"The dictates of the heart are the voice of fate."

"The hat is the pride of man; for he who cannot keep his hat on before kings and emperors is no free man."

"The empire of Saturnus is gone by; Lord of the secret birth of things is he; Within the lap of earth, and in the depths Of the imagination dominates; And his are all things that eschew the light. The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance, For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now, And the dark work, complete of preparation, He draws by force into the realm of light. Now must we hasten on to action, ere The scheme, and most auspicious positure Parts o'er my head, and takes once more its flight, For the heavens journey still, and adjourn not."

"Man is made of ordinary things, and habit is his nurse."

"I have only an office here, and no opinion."

"Virtue has her heroes too As well as Fame and Fortune."

"Many a crown shines spotless now That yet was deeply sullied in the winning."

"The world is narrow, broad the mind— Thoughts dwell easily side by side Things collide violently in space"

"There's no such thing as chance; And what to us seems merest accident Springs from the deepest source of destiny."

"What is life without the radiance of love?"

"Time is man's angel."

"The strong man is strongest when alone."

"Wir wollen sein ein einzig Volk von Brüdern, in keiner Not uns trennen und Gefahr. Wir wollen frei sein, wie die Väter waren, eher den Tod, als in der Knechtschaft leben. Wir wollen trauen auf den höchsten Gott und uns nicht fürchten vor der Macht der Menschen."

"The mountain cannot frighten one who was born on it."

"Who reflects too much will accomplish little."

"You saw his weakness, and he will never forgive you."

"This feat of Tell, the archer, will be told While yonder mountains stand upon their base. By heaven! The apple's cleft right through the core."

"No cause has he to say his doom is harsh, Who's made the master of his destiny."

"What's old collapses, times change, And new life blossoms in the ruins."

"A gloomy guest fits not a wedding feast."

"The most pious man can't stay in peace If it doesn't please his evil neighbor."

"The reason passes, like the heart, through certain epochs and transitions, but its development is not so often portrayed. Men seem to have been satisfied with unfolding the passions in their extremes, their aberration, and their results, without considering how closely they are bound up with the intellectual constitution of the individual."

"The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the condition in which their birth has placed then."

"Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth without running into extremes; we have frequently to exhaust the part of error, and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of tranquil wisdom."

"Truth suffers no loss if a vehement youth fails in finding it, in the same way that virtue and religion suffer no detriment if a criminal denies them."

"The universe is a thought of God. After this ideal thought-fabric passed out into reality, and the new-born world fulfilled the plan of its Creator—permit me to use this human simile—the first duty of all thinking beings has been to retrace the original design in this great reality; to find the principle in the mechanism, the unity in the compound, the law in the phenomenon, and to pass back from the structure to its primitive foundation. Accordingly to me there is only one appearance in nature—the thinking being. The great compound called the world is only remarkable to me because it is present to shadow forth symbolically the manifold expressions of that being. All in me and out of me is only the hieroglyph of a power which is like to me. The laws of nature are the cyphers which the thinking mind adds on to make itself understandable to intelligence—the alphabet by means of which all spirits communicate with the most perfect Spirit and with one another. Harmony, truth, order, beauty, excellence, give me joy, because they transport me into the active state of their author, of their possessor, because they betray the presence of a rational and feeling Being, and let me perceive my relationship with that Being."

"I speak with the Eternal through the instrument of nature, — through the world's history: I read the soul of the artist in his Apollo."

"Each state of the human mind has some parable in the physical creation by which it is shadowed forth; nor is it only artists and poets, but even the most abstract thinkers that have drawn from this source. Lively activity we name fire; time is a stream that rolls on, sweeping all before it; eternity is a circle; a mystery is hid in midnight gloom, and truth dwells in the sun. Nay, I begin to believe that even the future destiny of the human race is prefigured in the dark oracular utterances of bodily creation."

"Even the strongest minds cannot, with impunity, defy the prejudices of the age."

"It is an unfailing maxim, that if policy enjoins an act of violence, its execution must never be entrusted to the violent."

"Fortune, which had never forsaken him in his lifetime, favored the King of Sweden even in his death, with the rare privilege of falling in the fullness of his glory and an untarnished fame. By a timely death, his protecting genius rescued him from the inevitable fate of man - that of forgetting moderation in the intoxication of success, and justice in the plenitude of power."

"All men without distinction, are allured by immediate advantages. Great minds alone are excited by distant good. So long as wisdom in it's projects, calculates upon wisdom, or relies upon its own strength, it forms none by chimerical schemes - and runs the risk of making itself the laughter of the world. But it is certain of success, and can reckon upon aid and admiration, when it finds a place in it's plans for barbarism, rapacity and superstition and can render the selifsh passions of mankind the executor of its' purposes."

"In circumstances where the law of force prevails, where security depends on power alone, the weakest party is naturally the most busy to place itself in a posture of defense."

"Law can only be applied to foreseeable cases."