Of all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life the best.

We readily bow to antiquity, but not to posterity.  It is only a father that does not grudge talent to his son.  The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.

All our pursuits and actions are a wearying process.  Well is it for him who wearies not.

Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.

At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have worked for knowledge.  It was the age which put Socrates to death by poison, the age which burnt Huss.  The ages have always remained alike.

If a man knows where to get good advice, it is as though he could supply it himself.

A man must pay dear for his errors if he wishes to get rid of them, and even then he is lucky.

Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.

Error is related to truth as sleep to waking.  I have observed that on awakening from error a man turns again to truth as with new vigor.

Every one suffers who does not work for himself.  A man works for others to have them share in his joy.

Common-sense is born pure in the healthy man, is self-developed, and is revealed by a resolute perception and recognition of what is necessary and useful.  Practical men and women avail themselves of it with confidence.  Where it is absent, both sexes find anything necessary when they desire it, and useful when it gives them pleasure.

All men, as they attain freedom, give play to their errors.  The strong do too much, and the weak too little.

The conflict of the old, the existing, the continuing, with development, improvement and reform, is always the same.  Order of every kind turns at last to pedantry, and to get rid of the one, people destroy the other; and so it goes on for a while, until people perceive that order must be established anew.  Classicism and Romanticism; close corporations and freedom of trade; the maintenance of large estates and the division of the land—­it is always the same conflict which ends by producing a new one.  The best policy of those in power would be so to moderate this conflict as to let it right itself without the destruction of either element.  But this has not been granted to men, and it seems not to be the will of God.

A great work limits us for the moment, because we feel it above our powers; and only in so far as we afterward incorporate it with our culture, and make it part of our mind and heart, does it become a dear and worthy object.

There are many things in the world that are at once good and excellent, but they do not come into contact.

When men have to do with women, they get spun off like a distaff.

It may well be that a man is at times horribly threshed by misfortunes, public and private:  but the reckless flail of Fate, when it beats the rich sheaves, crushes only the straw; and the corn feels nothing of it and dances merrily on the floor, careless whether its way is to the mill or the furrow.