- Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
- Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.
- If youth is a fault, it is one that one gets rid of soon enough.
- [on children] If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.
- [on choice] Decision and perseverance are the noblest qualities of man.
- [on encouragement/discouragement] Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.
- 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?
- Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena. They are themselves their own lesson.
- Anyone who tortures animals has no soul and lacks God's good spirit, no matter how noble he may look, you should never trust him.
- If you like someone, you have to understand them. You don't always have to see your mistakes here and there. Look with love and forgiveness, because in the end you yourself are not flawless.
- I like to remember the times when all my limbs were flexible - except for one. But those times are over, all limbs have become stiff - except for one.
- Where right becomes wrong, resistance becomes a duty.
- Anyone who does not want to comply with the laws must leave the area where they apply.
- The world is full of folly, dullness, inconsistency and injustice; It takes a lot of courage not to give up on them and move aside.
- It is one of the saddest conditions under which we suffer to find ourselves separated, not only by death, but also by life, from those whom we value and love most and whose cooperation could best benefit us.
- One must always repeat the truth, because error is constantly being preached around us, and not by individuals, but by the masses. In newspapers and encyclopedias, at schools and universities, everywhere, error is at the forefront, and it is comfortable and comfortable with the feeling of the majority being on its side.
- It's not enough to know - you also have to apply. It's not enough to want - you also have to do.
- Nature has placed in every good heart the feeling that it cannot be happy on its own and that it must seek its happiness in the good of others.
- It's better to decide about right than exactly wrong.
- No one is more a slave than he who thinks he is free without being so.
- Nothing defines people's character more than what they find ridiculous.
- The most powerful fantasy is public opinion: no one knows exactly who makes it, no one has ever met it personally, but everyone allows themselves to be tyrannized by it!
- What no one dares, you should dare, what no one says, says what no one thinks, dares to think what no one starts, carries it out.
- Tell me who you associate with, and I will tell you who you are; If I know what you're busy with, I know what you can become.
- Children should get two things from their parents: roots and wings.
- Whoever strives hard, / We can redeem him.
- The newspaper writer himself is really to be deplored / He often knows nothing and is often not allowed to say anything.
- Happy when the days flow, alternating between joy and sorrow, between creating and enjoying, between the world and loneliness.
- What you have inherited from your fathers, acquire it to possess it! What you don't use, is a heavy burden.
- But I am what I am, and just accept me! If you want to own better ones, have them carved for you!
- When your head and heart are buzzing, what better could you want! Anyone who no longer loves and no longer makes mistakes, let them be buried.
- Treat people as they are and they will get worse. Treat people as they could be and they will get better!
- Of all nations, the Greeks dreamed the dream of life most beautifully.
- If you make yourself too green, the goats will eat you.
- Do you want to keep rambling? See the good is so close. Just learn to seize happiness: because happiness is always there.
- Nature doesn't know how to joke, it is always true, always serious, always strict, it is always right, and the mistakes and errors are always human.
- The purpose of life is life itself.
- I want to be free in thinking and writing. The world limits our actions enough.
- It's not that the friends come together, but that they agree.
- Every beginning is easy, and the last steps are the hardest and most rarely climbed.
- Everybody only hears what he understands.
- You've only really been where you've been on foot.
- That's the last word; He deserves freedom like life, who has to conquer it every day.
- There's no way that's right with this world; In vain you are good, in vain you are efficient, she wants us to be tame, she even wants us to be worthless!
- The spirits I called, / I can't get rid of them now.
- As soon as the mind is focused on a goal, many things come towards it.
- Have you researched the inner relationships of an action? Do you know with certainty how to develop the causes, why it happened, why it had to happen? If you had that, you wouldn't be so hasty in your judgments!
- He who does not love music does not deserve to be called a human being; He who only loves her is only half a person; But whoever does it is a whole person.
- I'm writing you a long letter because I don't have time to write a short one.
- If you want to find joy in the whole, you have to see the whole in the smallest things.
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