The Germans are like women, you can scarcely ever fathom their depths - they haven't any.

No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.

The Hour-Hand of Life --- Life consists of rare, isolated moments of the greatest significance, and of innumerably many intervals, during which at best the silhouettes of those moments hover about us. Love, springtime, every beautiful melody, mountains, the moon, the sea - all these speak completely to the heart but once, if in fact they ever do get a chance to speak completely. For many men do not have those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and intermissions in the symphony of real life.

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering among innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.

One has to know the size of one's stomach.

What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent : it is indecent to be a Christian today.

The dyed-in-the-wool teacher takes everything seriously only with respect to his students--himself included.