"The few of understanding, vision rare, Who..." - Quote by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

“Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than malice and wickedness.”

“Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.”

“The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.”

“And is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?”

“Men talk glibly enough about moonshine, as if they knew its qualities very well, and despised them; as owls might talk of sunshine,--none of your sunshine!--but this word commonly means merely something which they do not understand,--which they are abed and asleep to, however much it may be worth their while to be up and awake to it.”

“True reconciliation does not consist in merely forgetting the past.”

“I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this.”

“Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass.”

“Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”