Berthold Auerbach

The world is the same everywhere.

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

It is not joy nor repose which is the aim of life. It is work, or there is no aim at all.

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

The vain being is the really solitary being.

There is a childhood of the soul.

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

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

The best self-forgetfulness is to look at the things of the world with attention and love; for, really, attention is fraught with love, and perhaps that which is most unselfish.

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

A mirror is the very foundation of self-consciousness.

He who is one with himself, is everything.

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.

Nature has no moods. They belong to man alone.

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

The best loneliness is when no human eye has rested on our face for a whole day.

Our life is twofold.

What is all our knowledge? We do not even know what weather it will be to-morrow.

Imagination is the mightiest despot.

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

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

Gratitude is a soil on which joy thrives.

We make nothing: we only form and discover what is already there, but which without our assistance cannot release itself from shapeless chaos.

To a father, when his child dies, the future dies; to a child, when his parents die, the past dies.