A reproach can only hurt if it hits the mark. Whoever knows that he does not deserve a reproach can treat it with contempt.
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in.
Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.
If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.
In the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.
Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.
Life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.
Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.
Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.
Philosophy...is a science, and as such has no articles of faith.…
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand.
The foundation upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
This actual world of what is knowable, in which we are and which is in us, remains both the material and the limit of our consideration.
To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth.
Truth that has been merely learned is like an artificial limb...; it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by thinking of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs to us.
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become.
[Most arts] speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.
[The truth receives] only a brief triumph...between the two long periods in which it is condemned as paradoxical or disparaged as trivial.
