How much more the seeker of abstract truth, who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentration, and almost a going out of thebody to think!

Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners.

I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose.

Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists.

Our country, customs, laws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair-all these we never made; we found them ready-made; we but quote from them. What would remain to me if this art of appropriation were derogatory to genius? Every one of my writings has been furnished to me by a thousand different persons, a thousand things; wise and foolish have brought me, without suspecting it, the offering of their thoughts, faculties, and experience. My work is an aggregation of beings taken from the whole of nature. It bears the name of Goethe.

We love it because it is self dependent, self derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

Age, like woman, requires fit surroundings.