There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.

All ages have said and repeated that one should strive to know one's self. This is a strange demand which no one up to now has measured up to and, strictly considered, no one should. With all their study and effort, people are directed to what is outside, to the world about them, and they are kept busy coming to know this and to master it to the extent that their purposes require. . . . 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. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.

There is nothing more frightful than for a teacher to know only what his scholars are intended to know.

By nature we have no defect that could not become a strength, no strength that could not become a defect.

I have found among my papers a sheet . . . in which I call architecture frozen music.

Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth knowing and of what is not knowable.

Names are but noise and smoke, Obscuring heavenly light.