Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.

There is a politeness of the heart; this is closely allied to love.

Oh how sweet it is to hear one's own convictions from another's lips.

It is not given to us to grasp the truth, which is identical with the divine, directly. We perceive it only in reflection, in example and symbol, in singular and related appearances. It meets us as a kind of life which is incomprehensible to us, and yet we cannot free ourselves from the desire to comprehend it.

Nothing is more consonant with Nature than that she puts into operation in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.

To be sure, a good work of art can and will have moral consequences, but to demand of the artists moral intentions, means ruiningtheir craft.

Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.