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I'm gazing at church and palace, ruin and column,Like a serious man making sensible use of a journey,But soon it will happen, and all will be one vast temple,Love's temple, receiving its new initiate.Though you're a whole world, Rome, still, without Love,The world isn't the world, and Rome can't be Rome.
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Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
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The child, offered the mother's breast, Will not in the beginning grab it; But soon it clings to it with zest. And thus at wisdom's copious breasts You'll drink each day with greater zest.
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The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.
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A violet on the meadow grew, That no one saw, that no one knew, It was a modest flower. A shepherdess pass'd by that way. Light footed, pretty and so gay; That way she came, Softly warbling forth her lay.
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In der Kunst ist das Beste gut genug.
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An angel! Nonsense! Everybody so describes his mistress; and yet I find it impossible to tell you how perfect she is, or why she is so perfect: suffice it to say she has captivated all my senses.
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Young Schopenhauer, a zealous and thorough-going Kantian, tried to explain that light would cease to exist along with the seeing eye. 'What!' he said, according to Schopenhauer's own report, 'looking at him with his Jove-like eyes,'-'You should rather say that you would not exist if the light could not see you?'
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The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
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There's nothing clever that hasn't been thought of before - you've just got to try to think it all over again.
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Plants and flowers of the commonest kind can form a pleasing diary, because nothing which calls back to us the remembrance of a happy moment can be insignificant.
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I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.
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The greatest happiness for the thinking person is to have explored the explorable and to venerate in equanimity that which cannotbe explored.
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Only mankind Can do the impossible: He can distinguish, He chooses and judges, He can give permanence To the moment.
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In every artist there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable.
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As all Nature's thousands changes But one changeless God proclaim; So in Art's wide kingdom ranges One sole meaning still the same: This is Truth, eternal Reason, Which from Beauty takes its dress, And serene through time and season Stands aye in loveliness.
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Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.
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It is always a sign of an unproductive time when it concerns itself with petty and technical aspects [in philology], and likewiseit is a sign of an unproductive person to pursue such trifles.
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Whatever liberates our spirit, without also giving us mastery over ourselves, is destructive.
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The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is easy by what is difficult, is a calamity affecting the whole body of science, known, it is true, to men of insight, but not generally admitted.
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Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.
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You accuse a woman of wavering affections, but don't blame her; she is just looking for a consistent man.
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Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense.
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Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.