Music is the poetry of the air.
Nudity is the national costume of mankind.
We lack jokes, because we lack the seriousness that all the equalizing spirits are now replacing, laughing carelessly at virtue and vice, suppressing them.
Old age is not sad because it ends joys, but because it ends hopes.
There is nothing more dangerous than reconciling two people. Scolding them is easier and less dangerous.
Don't put things off for later, because it won't be easier later.
Ah, the music! The echo of the distant harmonious world! The sigh of the angel in our soul! When the word and the embrace and the tearful eye freeze, when our hearts yearn in loneliness in our bosoms—ah, then only because of you could they send each other an echo, unite in one hermitage their distant sighs .
Ridicule, moral indignation must be combined with the steadfastness of sublime feeling.
Memory is the only heaven from which no one can drive us away.
True morality is directly poetic, and poetry, in turn, is mediated moral.
Sharpness of mind is the consciousness of presence of mind.
The timid is afraid before danger, the coward, at the moment of it, and the brave, after the danger has passed.
The strongest hatred is the most silent, like the greatest and most virtuous and fiercest dogs.
The greatest shortcoming of man is that he has many small shortcomings.
Liberty is a good whose possession affords less pleasure than its loss affords suffering.
At present there is more teaching than there are learned, just as there are more virtues than virtuous men.
Modest is not he who is indifferent to praise, but he who is attentive to rebuke.
A man's conscience may err, without dishonoring the man himself, just as he may be tasteless, without falling into bad taste.
Superstition is a monstrous, almost invincible feeling, because of which a quiet man stands as if in the midst of the huge mill of the Universe, deaf and lonely.
What is true by lantern light is not necessarily true by sunlight.
Only in the moments of meeting and parting do people know how much love they have hidden in their hearts.
Only women are able to love both God and man.
Longing for love is love itself.
He who carries the lantern stumbles more often than he who follows in its footsteps.
He who has never sought either friendship or love is a thousand times poorer than he who has lost both.
In woman everything is only heart - even the head.
A man never shows his character more clearly than when he speaks of another person's character.
A good doctor saves you, if not from the disease, at least from a bad doctor.
Man must be open to passions, but also have the power to possess them.
The further an artist is from the moral ideal, the more expressive he is. This is why half-humans and half-devils always come out more successful than demigods.