Berthold Auerbach Quotes

Years teach us more than books.

If you sound great in the practice room, you're practicing the wrong thing. 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.

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

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

Of all afflictions, the worst is self contempt.

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

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.

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

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

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

Gratitude is a soil on which joy thrives.

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

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

Imagination is the mightiest despot.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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