C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Auerbach
“Good and stupid,” is a common saying. I have found that only the judicious are really good. Only clever men know what is good for others; and at the first appearance of disadvantage to himself, the stupid man deserts.
A. N. hopes in the next world for his felicity to live with Raphael, Mozart, and Goethe. But how can they be happy if they must live with him?
All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.
Being alone when one’s belief is firm, is not to be alone.
Discontent is the source of all trouble, but also of all progress in individuals and in nations.
Garden work consists much more in uprooting weeds than in planting seed. This applies also to teaching.
Gratitude is a soil on which joy thrives.
He who believes in nobody knows that he himself is not to be trusted.
He who, to be happy, needs nothing but himself, is happy.
I have been young and am now old, and have not yet known an untruthful man to come to a good end.
Imagination is the mightiest despot.
In Nature there is no dirt, everything is in the right condition; the swamp and the worm, as well as the grass and the bird,—all is there for itself. Only because we think that all things have a relation to us, do they appear justifiable or otherwise.
It is only when one is thoroughly true that there can be purity and freedom. Falsehood always punishes itself.
Liberty is from God; liberties from the Devil.
Music washes away from the soul the dust of every-day life.
Our second mother, habit, is also a good mother.
Solitude has a healing consoler, friend, companion: it is work.
Some men, like modern shops, hang everything in their show windows; when one goes inside, nothing is to be found.
The best and simplest cosmetic for women is constant gentleness and sympathy for the noblest interests of her fellow-creatures. This preserves and gives to her features an indelibly gay, fresh, and agreeable expression. If women would but realize that harshness makes them ugly, it would prove the best means of conversion.
The silver-leaved birch retains in its old age a soft bark; there are some such men.
The vain being is the really solitary being.
The world is the same everywhere.
To a father, when his child dies, the future dies; to a child, when his parents die, the past dies.
To harbor hatred and animosity in the soul makes one irritable, gloomy, and prematurely old.
Truly, one gets easier accustomed to a silken bed than to a sack of leaves.
We consider it tedious to talk of the weather, and yet there is nothing more important.
We hear the rain fall, but not the snow. Bitter grief is loud, calm grief is silent.
Weak men are easily put out of humor. Oil freezes quicker than water.
What people will say—in these words there lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the oblique vision of our minds. These four words bear sway everywhere.
When the foot of the mountain is enveloped in mist, the mountain appears to us much loftier than it is; so also when the ground and basis of a disaster is not clear to us.
When you have discovered a stain in yourself, you eagerly seek for and gladly find stains in others.
Why has no religion this command before all others: Thou shalt work?
With hat in hand, one gets on in the world.
Years teach us more than books.