Progress will always have as its recourse to exaggerate what it cannot surpass.
Category Archive: 1791
To test a modest man’s modesty do not investigate if he ignores applause, find out if he abides criticism.
If we notice a few errors in the work of a proven master, we may and even will often be correct; if we believe, however, that he is completely and utterly mistaken, we are in danger of missing his entire concept.
Drink and be thankful to the host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need it.
This searching and doubting and vacillating where nothing is clear but the arrogance of quest. I, too, had such noble ideas when I was still a boy.
The main reason why men and women make different aesthetic judgments is the fact that the latter, generally incapable of abstraction, only admire what meets their complete approval.
Those who want to row on the ocean of human knowledge do not get far, and the storm drives those out of their course who set sail.
When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet’s task to turn it into an audience.
To declaim freedom verses seems like a poem within a poem; freedom requires guns, it requires arms, but no feet.
No one will stop to help you when you are in need, but everyone forces opinions upon you that you do not require.