What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.

If you've never eaten while crying you don t know what life tastes like.

Lose the day loitering, 'twill be the same story To-morrow, and the next more dilatory, For indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or think you can, begin it! Only engage, and then the mind grows heated; Begin it, and the work will be completed.

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.

To have a positive religion is not necessary. To be in harmony with yourself and the universe is what counts, and this is possible without positive and specific formulation in words.

I consider him of no account who esteems himself just as the popular breath may chance to raise him.

God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.