The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.

Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self.

The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.

Manners are very communicable: men catch them from each other.

Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisonedin mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.

This body, full of faults, Has yet one great quality: Whatever it encounters in this temporal life depends upon one's actions.

Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.