“Life did not present its sunny side to thee.”

Many a smiling face hides a mourning heart; but grief alone teaches us what we are.

There is no solitude in nature.

Nothing leads to good that is not natural.

We must bear what Heaven sends.

Friends show me what I can do, foes teach me what I should do.

The history of the world is the world’s court of justice.

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.