My counsel is, to force nothing, and rather to trifle and sleep away all unproductive days and hours, than on such days to compose something that will afterwards give no pleasure.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

Love, whose power youth feels, is not suitable for the elderly, just as little as anything that presupposes productivity. It is rare that productivity lasts through the years.

Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.

Wouldst thou ever roam abroad? See, what is good lies by thy side. Only learn to catch happiness, for happiness is ever by you.

But when all is said, the greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself.

Happy contractedness of youth, nay, of mankind in general, that they think neither of the high nor the deep, of the true nor the false, but only of what is suited to their own conceptions.