Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.

I observed once to Goethe that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself.

There is only one inborn error. and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy.

He who can see truly in the midst of general infatuation is like a man whose watch keeps good time, when all clocks in the town in which he lives are wrong. He alone knows the right time; what use is that to him?

There is not a grain of dust, not an atom that can become nothing, yet man believes that death is the annhilation of his being.

In truth the most striking figure for the relation of the two is that of the strong blind man carrying the sighted lame man on his shoulders.