If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

     The work we choose should be our own,
     God lets alone.

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.

Deep are the foundations of sincerity.  Even stone walls have their foundation below the frost.

What is produced by a free stroke charms us, like the forms of lichens and leaves.  There is a certain perfection in accident which we never consciously attain.  Draw a blunt quill filled with ink over a sheet of paper, and fold the paper before the ink is dry, transversely to this line, and a delicately shaded and regular figure will be produced, in some respects more pleasing than an elaborate drawing.

The talent of composition is very dangerous,—­the striking out the heart of life at a blow, as the Indian takes off a scalp.  I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.

On his journey from Brenner to Verona, Goethe writes: 

“The Tees flows now more gently, and makes in many places broad sands.  On the land, near to the water, upon the hillsides, everything is so closely planted one to another, that you think they must choke one another,—­vineyards, maize, mulberry-trees, apples, pears, quinces, and nuts.  The dwarf elder throws itself vigorously over the walls.  Ivy grows with strong stems up the rocks, and spreads itself wide over them, the lizard glides through the intervals, and everything that wanders to and fro reminds one of the loveliest pictures of art.  The women’s tufts of hair bound up, the men’s bare breasts and light jackets, the excellent oxen which they drive home from market, the little asses with their loads,—­everything forms a living, animated Heinrich Roos.  And now that it is evening, in the mild air a few clouds rest upon the mountains, in the heavens more stand still than move, and immediately after sunset the chirping of crickets begins to grow more loud; then one feels for once at home in the world, and not as concealed or in exile.  I am contented as though I had been born and brought up here, and were now returning from a Greenland or whaling voyage.  Even the dust of my Fatherland, which is often whirled about the wagon, and which for so long a time I had not seen, is greeted.  The clock-and-bell jingling of the crickets is altogether lovely, penetrating, and agreeable.  It sounds bravely when roguish boys whistle in emulation of a field of such songstresses.  One fancies that they really enhance one another.  Also the evening is perfectly mild as the day.”

“If one who dwelt in the south, and came hither from the south, should hear of my rapture hereupon, he would deem me very childish.  Alas! what I here express I have long known while I suffered under an unpropitious heaven, and now may I joyful feel this joy as an exception, which we should enjoy everforth as an eternal necessity of our nature.”