How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to.

We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an atmosphere about which we still know nothing at all.

The best benefit we derive from history is the enthusiasm it excites.

What must the English and French think of the language of our philosophers when we Germans do not understand it ourselves?

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

My counsel is, to force nothing, and rather to trifle and sleep away all unproductive days and hours, than on such days to compose something that will afterwards give no pleasure.

The world is so great and rich, and life so full of variety, that you can never lack occasions for poems.