“Illusion is brief, but repentance is long.”

Not without a shudder may the human hand reach into the mysterious urn of destiny.

Sentimental poetry differs from naive poetry in that it relates the real state at which the latter stops to ideas and applies ideas to that reality.

It is often wise to reveal that which cannot be concealed for long.

Most gladly would I give the blood-stained laurel for the first violet which March brings us, the fragrant pledge of the new-fledged year.

Don’t let your heart depend on things That ornament life in a fleeting way! He who possesses, let him learn to lose, He who is fortunate, let him learn pain.

Keep true to the dreams of your youth.

Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.

Measure not by the scale of perfection the meager product of reality.

He cannot complain of a hard sentence, who is made master of his own fate.

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.

Time flies on restless pinions – constant never.

To one, science is an exalted goddess; to another it is a cow which provides him with butter.

When the gods were more manlike, Men were more godlike.

To be man’s tender mate was woman born, and in obeying nature she best serves the purposes of heaven.

We can never replace a friend. When a man is fortunate enough to have several, he finds they are all different. No one has a double in friendship.

Against stupidity, God Himself fights in vain.

Speak briefly and to the point.

Any happiness, no matter how brief, seemed better than the long, simmering torture of waking up day after day, knowing i could never have him.

Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place – service – social service – the ants creed, the bees creed.

I thought, briefly, that I would never feel as intensely connected to the world, to another human being, as I did at that moment.

The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all.

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.

But only a brief moment is granted to the brave one breath or two, whose wage is the long nights of the grave.

Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.