A.R. Von Quotes

One ought, everyday, to hear a song, read a fine poem, and, if possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

That which is eternal in Woman lifts us above.

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

Napoleon affords us an example of the danger of elevating one's self to the absolute, and sacrificing everything to the carrying out of an idea.

Energy will do anything that can be done in the world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged animal a man without it.

I was oppressed with the sensations I then felt; I sunk under the weight of them.

The master proves himselin recognizing his limitations.

A resolution that is communicated is no longer within thy power; thy attentions become now the plaything of chance; he who would have his commands certainly carried out must take man by surprise.

There is nothing more frightful than an active ignorance. [Ger., Es ist nichts schrecklicher als eine thatige Unwissenheit.]

Thou tremblest before anticipated ills, and still bemoanest what thou never losest.

What makes poetry? A full heart, brimful of one noble passion.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

Ah! my poor brain is racked and crazed, My spirit and senses amazed!

Battle not with monsters, for then you become one.

Once I blazed across the sky, Leaving trails of flame; I fell to earth, and here I lie - Who'll help me up again? -A Shooting Star

Since Time is not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.

War is in truth a disease in which the juices that serve health and maintenance are used for the sole purpose of nourishing something foreign, something at odds with nature.

It is so hard that one cannot really have confidence in doctors and yet cannot do without them.

The brilliant passes, like the dew at morn; The true endures, for ages yet unborn.

What I possess I would gladly retain. Change amuses the mind, yet scarcely profits.

Stood I, O Nature! man alone in thee, Then were it worth one's while a man to be.

Give shape, artist! don't talk! Your poem be but a breath.

All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.

The force of a language does not consist of rejecting what is foreign but of swallowing it.

Time flies, and what is past is done.

Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.

I believe in God and in nature and in the triumph of good over evil.

It doesn't behoove elderly persons to follow fashion in their thinking nor in the way they dress.

All that is noble is in itself of a quiet nature, and appears to sleep until it is aroused and summoned forth by contrast.

We are pantheists as natural scientists, polytheists as poets, and monotheists as moral beings.

Confronted by outstanding merit, there is no way of saving one's ego except by love

True happiness springs from moderation.

The church alone beyond all question Has for ill-gotten goods the right digestion.

We find from experience that yellow excites a warm and agreeable impression.... The eye is gladdened, the heart expanded and cheered, a glow seems at once to breathe toward us.

If the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once by a contradiction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression, an interruption, and all the thousand tricks of conversation.

Sceptics are generally ready to believe anything, provided it is sufficiently improbable.

The sceptic only stumbles at matter of fact.

I have always been a big supporter and fan of independent designers in general.

I understand Hitler... I sympathise with him a little bit.

I'm not a woman! Let's make that very clear! Oh I don't know, maybe I am. I am an American woman. Or 65 percent of me is.

I hope my films will never completely be without the ability to mark anybody.

I did a lot of strange things. But I am a bad Catholic that's for sure. Although I think it's difficult to believe in evil.

A slap in the face is more effective than ten lectures. It makes you understand very quickly.

Man desires, woman is desired.

Pleasure alone makes existence worthwhile. A pleasure-seeker has a difficult time parting from life.

You cannot deny that love lasts for only a brief moment, uniting two beings as a single being that is capable of only one thought, one sensation, one will.

My heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad.

Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will.

Fortunes cannot grow; someone has to increase them.

History can tell us what happened in the past. But it cannot assert that it must happen again in the future.