A.R. Von Quotes

The man who masters himself is delivered from the force that binds all creatures.

The confidant of my vices is my master, though he were my valet.

When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.

Several classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.

A statesman... must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.

How marvelous, wide and broad is my Inheritance! Time is my property, my estate is time.

No skill or art is needed to grow old; the trick is to endure it.

The clever reader who is capable or reading between these lines what does not stand written in them but is nevertheless implied will be able to form some conception.

Big business depends entirely on the patronage of those who buy its products: the biggest enterprises loses its power and its influence when it loses its customers.

The trouble is small, the fun is great. [Ger., Die Muh'ist klein, der Spass ist gross.]

A well-bred carriage is difficult to imitate; for in strictness it is negative, and it implies a long-continued previous training.

When I err every one can see it, but not when I lie. [Ger., Wenn ich irre kann es jeder bemerken; wenn ich luge, nicht.]

A wounded heart can with difficulty be cured. [Ger., Doch ein gekranktes Herz erholt sich schwer.]

Only the heart without a stain knows perfect ease. [Ger., Ganz unbefleckt geniesst sich nur das Herz.]

My peace is gone, my heart is heavy. [Ger., Meine Ruh ist hin, Mein Herz ist schwer.]

What in us the women leave uncultivated, children cultivate when we retain them near us.

Yet he who grasps the moment's gift, He is the proper man.

Say what we may of the inadequacy of translation, yet the work is and will always be one of the weightiest and worthiest undertakings in the general concerns of the world.

Seldom in the business and transactions of ordinary life, do we find the sympathy we want.

Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.

Out of moderation a pure happiness springs.

You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy best among miners; and so with everything else.

Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow,- He knows you not, ye heavenly Powers.

I look upon all four Gospels as thoroughly genuine, for there shines forth from them the reflected splendor of a sublimity proceeding from Jesus Christ.

The first thing a genius needs is to breath free air.

The government and its chiefs do not have the powers of the mythical Santa Claus. They cannot spend except by taking out of the pockets of some people for the benefit of others.

If the mass of people hesitate to act, strike with swiftly and with boldness, the brave heart that understands and seizes opportunity can everything.

Planning other people's actions means to prevent them from planning for themselves, means to deprive them of their essentially human quality, means enslaving them.

Government is an apparatus of compulsion and coercion.

Civilization is a work of peaceful co-operation.

Nothing, however, is as ill founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race.

The wealth of the well-to-do of an industrial society is both the cause and effect of the masses' well-being.

In capitalist enterprise there is no secure income and no security of wealth.

The school is a political prize of the highest importance. It cannot be deprived of its political character as long as it remains a public and compulsory institution.

Mankind does not drink alcohol because there are breweries, distilleries, and vineyards; men brew beer, distill spirits, and grow grapes because of the demand for alcoholic drinks.

It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary.

The avowed aim of all utopian movements is to put an end to history and to establish a final and permanent calm.

In public administration there is no connection between revenue and expenditure.

During the 2300 years since Plato, very little opposition has been registered to his ideas.

If one regards inflation as an evil, then one has to stop inflating. One has to balance the budget of the government.

Socialist society is a society of officials.

Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of what is called economic freedom.

Spontaneous actions of individuals, aiming at nothing else than at the improvement of their own state of satisfaction, undermined the prestige of the coercive status system step by step.

Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will

The field of experience is the whole universe in all directions. Theory remains shut up within the limits of human faculties.

Innovation is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public.

The greatest act of faith takes place when a man finally decides that he is not God.

To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.

Only one thing can conquer war-that attitude of mind which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation.

Self-love exaggerates our faults as well as our virtues.