One should not search for anything behind the phenomena. They themselves are the message.

I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.

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

Faust: Who holds the devil, let him hold him well, He hardly will be caught a second time.

Doesn't surprise me that Christ our Lord preferred to live with whores and sinners, seeing I go in for that myself.

Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.

A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.