Berthold Auerbach

What people will say - in these words there lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the oblique vision of our minds. These four words bear sway everywhere.

When the foot of the mountain is enveloped in mist, the mountain appears to us much loftier than it is; so also when the ground and basis of a disaster is not clear to us.

Give aid to all, expect it from none.

Liberty is from God; liberties form the Devil.

Music is a universal language, and needs not be translated. With it soul speaks to soul.

Music washes away from the soul the dust of every-day life.

One often needs most the unnecessary.

Only he is free who cultivates his own thoughts... and strives without fear of man to do justice to them.

Only the industrious are inwardly cheerful and peaceful.

Solitude has a healing consoler, friend, companion: it is work.

The highest task of education is training for duty.

The vain being is the really solitary being.

Anxiety is the worst demon in life.

Discontent is the source of trouble, but also of progress.

There is no greatness that does not rest on true morality.

Gratitude is a soil on which joy thrives.

He who believes in nobody knows that he himself is not to be trusted.

Of all afflictions, the worst is self-contempt.

All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.

Being alone when one’s belief is firm, is not to be alone.

Discontent is the source of all trouble, but also of all progress in individuals and in nations.

Garden work consists more in uprooting weeds than in planting seed. This applies also to teaching.