BERTHOLD AUERBACH

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

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

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

Of all afflictions, the worst is self-contempt.

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

Some men, like modern shops, hang everything in their show windows; when one goes inside, nothing is to be found.

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.

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.

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

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.

Liberty is from God; liberties, from the devil.

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

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

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

The vain being is the really solitary being.

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

Years teach us more than books.

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

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

The world is the same everywhere.

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.

Imagination is the mightiest despot.

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.

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

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