This accident is not a misfortune, but bearing it well turns it to an advantage.
Eras
Romantic & Nineteenth Century
Formation of the self — German, Russian, American, Danish.
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
One lives but once in the world.
Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient.
If you assign people duties without granting them any rights, you must pay them well.
One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.
The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit — this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
If your abilities are only mediocre, modesty is mere honesty; but if you possess great talents, it is hypocrisy.
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try to win one another's money. Idiots!
Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.
Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.
The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority, have always done just the opposite.
Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can't expect an angel to look out.
No rose without a thorn. But many a thorn without a rose.
No man ought to expect much from others, or, in general, from the external world. What one human being can be to another is not a very great deal: in the end everyone stands alone, and the important thing is who it is that stands alone.
You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.
Compassion is the basis of morality.
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish only to be a Yes-sayer.
Mature manhood: that means to have rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play.
There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena.
The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
What does your conscience say? — You shall become the person you are.
What makes one heroic? — Going out to meet at the same time one's highest suffering and one's highest hope.
The secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously!
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
The state has never any concern with truth, but only with the truth useful to it, or rather, with anything that is useful to it, be it truth, half-truth, or error.
I live in my own place, have never copied nobody even half, and at any master who lacks the grace to laugh at himself — I laugh.
What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
Without music, life would be a mistake.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.
All life is an experiment.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day.
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, while he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
The years teach much which the days never knew.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon-balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.
Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you.
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
I love to be alone. I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.
If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.
No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government when it deserves it.
Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.
I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.
I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.
But how could you live and have no story to tell?
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts.
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
The only intelligent tactical response to life's horror is to laugh defiantly at it.
Marry, and you will regret it; don't marry, you will also regret it; marry or don't marry, you will regret it either way.
A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.
If I were a father and had a daughter who became a prostitute, I should not despair over her; I would continue to hope for her salvation. But if I had a son who became a journalist and continued to be one for five years, I would give him up.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
The most common form of despair is not being who you are.
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
People in those old times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.
Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
A problem properly stated is a problem partly solved.
I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
The majority possesses a power that is physical and moral at the same time, which acts upon the will as well as upon the actions, and represses not only all contest, but all controversy.
Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
A strong nature feels itself brought into the world for its own development and not for the approbation of the public.
The amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity.
Time is that in which all things pass away.
Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.
One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
Easy mind, light heart. A mind that is too easy hides a heart that is too heavy.
No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine that they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.
You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves.
When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love.
I still hope to be able to make something of myself, but who can do anything after Beethoven?