Whatever we think out, whatever we take in hand to do, should be perfectly and finally finished, that the world, if it must alter, will only have to spoil it; we have then nothing to do but unite the severed, to recollect and restore the dismembered.

It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.

We learn to treasure what is above this earth; we long for revelation, which nowhere burns more purely and more beautifully than in the New Testament.

Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will -- it's only action that can make a man.