Everything perfect in its kind has to transcend its own kind, it must become something different and incomparable. In some notes the nightingale is still a bird; then it rises above its class and seems to suggest to every winged creature what singing is truly like.

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

Everything that we encounter leaves traces behind. Everything contributes imperceptibly to our education

Love can do much, but duty more.

I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times.

Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.

The misery that oppresses you lies not in your profession but in yourself! What man in the world would not find his situation intolerable if he chooses a craft, an art, indeed any form of life, without experiencing an inner calling? Whoever is born with a talent, or to a talent, must surely find in that the most pleasing of occupations! Everything on this earth has its difficult sides! Only some inner drive - pleasure, love - can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path, and lift as out of the narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existences!