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.

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.

This administration in Washington... clearly believes that government is not only the answer to every need but it's the most qualified to make essential decisions for every American in every area. That mix of arrogance and audacity that guides the Obama administration is an affront to every freedom-loving American.

Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel.

I would like to see us get this place right first before we have the arrogance to put significantly flawed civilizations out onto other planets, even though they may be utterly uninhabited.

What annoys the hell out of me is the arrogance of some people. They don't even listen to our music, they decided in advance that they don't like it.

I'm Billy the Kid, the fastest draw. It's not arrogance. It's the truth.

It is not a sign of arrogance for the king to rule. That is what he is there for.

Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change.

Science moves with the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty.

Timing and arrogance are decisive factors in the successful use of talent.

There is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.

We had every problems starting a big top could have. The tent fell down on the first day. We had problems getting people into the shows. It was only with the courage and arrogance of youth that we survived.

Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.