It's the misfortune of German authors that not a single one of them dares to expose his true character. Everyone thinks that he has to be better than he is.

No shortcomings of other people cause us to be more intolerant than those which are caricatures of our own.

Science and art, or by the same token, poetry and prose differ from one another like a journey and an excursion. The purpose of the journey is its goal, the purpose of an excursion is the process.

Whoever places his trust into a system will soon be without a home. While you are building your third story, the two lower ones have already been dismantled.

There shall be no slave in your home, male or female: Least of all the mother of your son.

It's the misfortune of German authors that not a single one of them dares to expose his true character. Everyone thinks that he has to be better than he is.

To declaim freedom verses seems like a poem within a poem; freedom requires guns, it requires arms, but no feet.

Prose talks and poetry sings.

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.

Although your knowledge is weak and small, you need not be silent: since you cannot be judges be at least witnesses.

Mankind is getting smarter every day. Actually, it only seems so. At least we are making progress. We're progressing, to be sure, ever more deeply into the forest.

Ideas are not thoughts; the thought respects the boundaries that the idea ignores thereby failing to realize itself.

Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun.

If someone were to think that trees are made to support the sky, they would all seem too short.

To test a modest man's modesty do not investigate if he ignores applause, find out if he abides criticism.

Progress will always have as its recourse to exaggerate what it cannot surpass.

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.

You even called me stupid in your verse, and I'm almost agreeing, for where stupidity is involved, you are quite an expert, friend.

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.

No one will stop to help you when you are in need, but everyone forces opinions upon you that you do not require.

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.

Poetry, it is often said and loudly so, is life's true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work of literature looks in vain for Socrates.

Drink and be thankful to the host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need it.

I look around me and nowhere do I see a stamp of disapproval with which nature marked a woman's candid brow.

Before passing different laws for different people, I'd relinquish myself unto you as your slave.

When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet's task to turn it into an audience.

The uneducated person perceives only the individual phenomenon, the partly educated person the rule, and the educated person the exception.

The ideas of an age are most abundant where they are not crowded by original ideas.

Without a notion of the transcendental, human beings would, indeed, be animals; however, only fools can be convinced of it, and only degenerates need such a conviction.

How frightening it is to have reached the height of human accomplishment in art that must forever borrow from lifes abundance.

Metaphysics must be based on what exists, for it has the task of explicating it.

Human life, old and young, takes place between hope and remembrance. The young man sees all the gates to his desires open, and the old man remembers--his hopes.

Servants honor their master by their service.

Austrian soldiers are like horses: brave but easily frightened.

Turning popular opinion upside down does not make an original.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.

I liked Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and that is the kind of character that I would like to have played. That would have been more in tune with who I really was.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

In a lot of ways, the make-up was the character.

The more we study the Indian's character the more we appreciate the marked distinction between the civilized being and the real savage.

So many people have said that to me, that what they really like about Alex is what she brings out in Marissa, and what this situation brings out in her, a hint of happiness and another side to her character.

I've been on the show for six years and I don't even know what her history is. I sort of make things up in my mind, but I think it's hard for an audience to follow and invest in a character when they don't have the details.

It is not true that drink changes a man's character. It may reveal it more clearly.

Because I killed a guy in real life, and because my character kills a guy onstage, they said I could never do anything this great again. I resented that.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.