Berthold Auerbach Quotes

Years teach us more than books.

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

To acquire money requires valor, to keep money requires prudence, and to spend money well is an art.

In Nature there is no dirt, everything is in the right condition;

the swamp and the worm, as well as the grass and the bird,-all is there for itself.

Of all afflictions, the worst is self contempt.

To harbor hatred and animosity in the soul makes one irritable, gloomy, and prematurely old.

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

The silver-leaved birch retains in its old age a soft bark; there are some such men.

The vain being is the really solitary being.

We consider it tedious to talk of the weather, and yet there is nothing more important.

With hat in hand, one gets on in the world.

Weak men are easily put out of humor. Oil freezes quicker than water.

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.

Our second mother, habit, is also a good mother.

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.

The best and simplest cosmetic for women is constant gentleness and sympathy for the noblest interests of her fellow-creatures. This preserves and gives to her features an indelibly gay, fresh, and agreeable expression. If women would but realize that harshness makes them ugly, it would prove the best means of conversion.

Judaism lives not in an abstract creed, but in its institutions.

Liberty is from God; liberties, from the devil.

When you have discovered a stain in yourself, you eagerly seek for and gladly find stains in others.

The world is the same everywhere.

Some men, like modern shops, hang everything in their show windows;

when one goes inside, nothing is to be found.

We hear the rain fall, but not the snow. Bitter grief is loud, calm grief is silent.

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

People look with sympathetic eyes only at the blossom and the fruit, and disregard the long period of transition during which the one is ripening into the other.

Imagination is the mightiest despot.

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

Truly, one gets easier accustomed to a silken bed than to a sack of leaves.

No mortal eye has ever fully seen a flash of lightning .

.. for no matter how firmly we look, our eyes are sure to be dazzled.

Gratitude is a soil on which joy thrives.

Why has no religion this command before all others: Thou shalt work?

What is all our knowledge worth? We do not even know what the weather will be tomorrow.

It is only when one is thoroughly true that there can be purity and freedom.

Falsehood always punishes itself.

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

He who, to be happy, needs nothing but himself, is happy.

I have been young and am now old, and have not yet known an untruthful man to come to a good end.

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