"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."

"Wie viele Sprachen du sprichst, sooft mal bist du Mensch."

"Wir sprechen überhaupt viel zu viel. Wir sollten weniger sprechen und mehr zeichnen. Ich meinerseits möchte mir das Reden ganz abgewöhnen und wie die bildende Natur in lauter Zeichnungen fortsprechen."

"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least."

"The fashion of this world passeth away and I would fain occupy myself with the things that are abiding."

"The ever-changing display of plant forms, which I have followed for so many years, awakens increasingly within me the notion: The plant forms which surround us were not all created at some given point in time and then locked into the given form, they have been given... a felicitous mobility and plasticity that allows them to grow and adapt themselves to many different conditions in many different places. ...How they can be brought together under one concept has slowly become clear to me and that this conception can be enlivened at a higher level [of consciousness]: thus I began to recognize, in the sense perceptible form, a supersensible archetype. Whoever has felt what a rich, saturated thought... has to say, will admit what a passionate movement comes to life in the spirit when we are enthused, and we anticipate the totality of what will evolve step by step...""

"Smoking stupefies a man, and makes him incapable of thinking or writing. It is only fit for idlers, people who are always bored, who sleep for a third of their lifetime, fritter away another third in eating, drinking, and other necessary or unnecessary affairs, and don't know—though they are always complaining that life is so short—what to do with the rest of their time. Such lazy Turks find mental solace in handling a pipe and gazing at the clouds of smoke that they puff into the air; it helps them to kill time. Smoking induces drinking beer, for hot mouths need to be cooled down. Beer thickens the blood, and adds to the intoxication produced by the narcotic smoke. The nerves are dulled and the blood clotted. If they go on as they seem to be doing now, in two or three generations we shall see what these beer-swillers and smoke-puffers have made of Germany. You will notice the effect on our literature—mindless, formless, and hopeless; and those very people will wonder how it has come about. And think of the cost of it all! Fully 25,000,000 thalers a year end in smoke all over Germany, and the sum may rise to forty, fifty, or sixty millions. The hungry are still unfed, and the naked unclad. What can become of all the money? Smoking, too, is gross rudeness and unsociability. Smokers poison the air far and wide and choke every decent man, unless he takes to smoking in self-defence. Who can enter a smoker's room without feeling ill? Who can stay there without perishing?"

"Es ist so gewiß als wunderbar, daß Wahrheit und Irrthum aus Einer Quelle entstehen; deßwegen man oft dem Irrthum nicht schaden darf, weil man zugleich der Wahrheit schadet."

"Hypotheses are scaffoldings erected in front of a building and then dismantled when the building is finished. They are indispensable for the workman; but you mustn't mistake the scaffolding for the building."

"Alles ist einfacher, als man denken kann, zugleich verschränkter, als zu begreifen ist."

"A thinking man's greatest happiness is to have fathomed what can be fathomed and to revere in silence what cannot be fathomed."

"Das Klassische nenne ich das Gesunde und das Romantische das Kranke."

"Nichts ist höher schätzen als der Werth des Tages."

"Neuere Poeten tun viel Wasser in die Tinte."

"Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art."

"Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error."

"The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is easy by what is difficult, is a calamity affecting the whole body of science, known, it is true, to men of insight, but not generally admitted."

"A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth."

"When you see some evil you proceed to immediate action, you make an immediate attack to cure the symptom."

"Wenn mancher sich nicht verpflichtet fühlte, das Unwahre zu wiederholen, weil er’s einmal gefügt hat, fo wären es ganz andere Leute geworden."

"Es ist nichts schrecklicher als eine tätige Unwissenheit."

"This is why we may say that those who parade piety as a purpose and an aim mostly turn into hypocrites"

"Piety is not an end but a means to attain by the greatest peace of mind the highest degree of culture."

"Everything that liberates our mind without at the same time imparting self-control is pernicious."

"There's nothing clever that hasn't been thought of before — you've just got to try to think it all over again."

"Theories usually result from the precipitate reasoning of an impatient mind which would like to be rid of phenomena and replaces them with images, concepts, indeed often with mere words."

"Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an irresistible longing for the original."

"Die Wissenschaft hilft uns vor allem, daß sie das Staunen, wozu wir von Natur berufen find."

"The first and last thing demanded of genius is love of truth."

"Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige, die uns lehrt, uns selbst zu regieren."

"Der Irrthum verhält sich gegen das Wahre wie der Schlaf gegen das Wachen. Ich habe bemerkt, daß man aus dem Irren sich wie erquickt wieder zu dem Wahren hinwende."

"Die Wahrheit widerspricht unserer Natur, der Irrthum nicht, und zwar aus einem sehr einfachen Grunde: die Wahrheit fordert, daß wir uns für beschränkt erkennen follen, der Irrthum schmeichelt uns. wir seien auf ein- oder die andere Weise unbegränzt."

"Unter allen Völkerschaften haben die Griechen den Traum des Lebens am schönsten geträumt."

"You really only know when you know little. Doubt grows with knowledge."

"You often say to yourself in the course of your life that you ought to avoid having too much business, 'polypragmosyne' [incessant activity], and, more especially, that the older you get, the more you ought to avoid entering on new business. But it's all very well saying this, and giving yourself andothers good advice. The very fact of growing older means taking up a new business; all our circumstances change, and we must either stop doing anything at all or else willing and consciously take on the new role we have to play on life's stage."

"Der thörigste von allen Irrthümern ist, wenn junge gute Köpfe glauben, ihre Originalität zu verlieren, indem sie das Wahre anerkennen, was von andern schon anerkannt worden."

"Just as, out of habit, one consults a run-down clock as though it were still going, so too one may look at the face of a beautiful woman as though she were still in love."

"Der Handelnde ist immer gewissenlos; es hat niemand Gewissen als der Betrachtende."

"Man darf nur alt werden, um milder zu sein; ich sehe keinen Fehler begehen, den ich nicht auch begangen hätte."

"Mysteries do not as yet amount to miracles."

"Die Welt ist eine Glocke, die einen Riß hat: sie klappert, aber klingt nicht."

"Man sagt: „Studire, Künstler, die Natur!” Es ist aber keine Kleinigkeit, aus dem Gemeinen das Edle, aus der Unform das Schöne zu entwickeln."

"Ich bedauere die Menschen, welche von der Vergänglichkeit der Dinge viel Wesens machen und sich in Betrachtung irdischer Nichtigkeit verlieren. Sind wir ja eben deßhalb da, um das Vergängliche unvergänglich zu machen; das kann ja nur dadurch geschehen, wenn man beides zu schätzen weiß."

"Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen."

"Und doch sehr oft, wenn wir uns von dem Beabsichtigten für ewig getrennt sehen, haben wir schon auf unserm Wege irgend ein anderes Wünschenswerthe gefunden, etwas uns Gemäßes, mit dem uns zu begnügen wir eigentlich geboren sind."

"Die Kunst an und für sich selbst ist edel; deßhalb fürchtet sich der Künstler nicht vor dem Gemeinen. Ja indem er es aufnimmt, ist es schon geadelt, und so sehen wir die größten Künstler mit Kühnheit ihr Majestätsrecht ausüben."

"Behaviour is a mirror in which everyone shows his image."