The finished man, you know, is difficult to please; a growing mind will ever show you gratitude. --Faust 1, lines 182-3

One glance, one word from you gives more pleasure than all the wisdom of this world.

Human life runs its course in the metamorphosis between receiving and giving.

Conscience is the virtue of the observers not the agents of action

All that is transitory is but a metaphor.

If you live criticizing people, you won't have time to love them.

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.