“Publishers are all cohorts of the devil; there must be a special hell for them somewhere.”

“All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.”

“You at -all things considered- what you are. Put on your head perukes with myriad curls, stalk about on foot-high stilts, still what you are, you must always remain.”

“Through many a long day you'll be taught That what you once did without thinking, As easy as if it were eating or drinking, Must be done in order: one! two! three! But truly, this though factory of ours Is like some weaver's masterpiece: One treadle stirs a thousand threads, This way and that the shuttles whistle, Threads flow invisibly, one ... Read morestroke Ties a thousand knots .... The philosopher steps in And proves to you it had to be so; The first was so, the second was so, And therefore the third and fourth were so. If the first and second hadn't existed, The third and fourth would never have existed. And this is praised by every scholar, But never a one becomes a weaver. To know and describe a living thing You first get rid of all its spirit: Then the parts are all in the palm of your hand, And all that you lack is the spirit that binds them! Encheiresis naturae, chemists call it, And fool themselves and never know it”

“Men grieve [Mephistopheles] so with the days of their lamenting, [he] even hate[s] to plague them with [his] torments.”

“We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an atmosphere about which we still know nothing at all.”

“see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which gain have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation”