Men have made of fortune an all-powerful goddess, in order that she may be made responsible for all their blunder's.

I never was able to believe in the existence of next year except as in a metaphysical notion.

Life teaches much, but to all thinking persons it brings ever closer the will of God - not because their faculties decline, but on the contrary, because they increase.

The life of famous men was more glorious in antiquity; the life of obscure men is happier with the moderns.

Goethe has made a remark upon the perfectability of the human mind, which is full of sagacity: It is always advancing, but in a spiral line.

Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.

inventiveness is childish, practice sublime.