Emulation is a noble and just passion, full of appreciation.

If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad.

Man, living, feeling man, is the easy sport of the over-mastering present.

Even now, nature is the only flame, on which the poetic spirit feeds; from it alone it draws all its power, to it alone it speaks even in the artificial, in the man engaged in culture.

Knowledge, the object of knowledge and the knower are the three factors which motivate action; the senses, the work and the doer comprise the threefold basis of action.

The world's history is constant, like the laws of nature, and simple, like the souls of men. The same conditions continually produce the same results.

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.