Bunglers and pedants judge art according to genre; they approve of this and dismiss that genre, but instead of genres, the open-minded connoisseur appreciates only individual works.

Whoever places his trust into a system will soon be without a home. While you are building your third story, the two lower ones have already been dismantled.

Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists.

Boundless in your charity, but shrewd and cautious as a lender, you delight all those today whom you made beggars the day before.

I love the pride whose measure is its own eminence and not the insignificance of someone else.

The present is never poetic as it serves necessity, necessity, however, is prosaic.

The sun of a prince's good graces resembles that in the skies in that it shines most kindly upon the blackest people.