We are all of us, gods and mortals, made up of many pieces, some of them broken, some of them scarred, but none of them the total sum of who we are.
Content thyself to be obscurely good.
One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.
Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.
Persons in great stations have seldom their true character drawn till several years after their death. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunities of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.
I have often thought, says Sir Roger, it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of Winter.
When I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.
You must maintain strength of body in order to preserve strength of mind.
You know, those kinds of things in your life. . . movies you try to work out your issues, then you realize those kinds of traumatic issues just stay with you forever and they just keep reoccurring, and no matter how hard I try to get them out of my head, they just sort of stay there.
When [Adolf] Hitler was in Munich, their place [with Eva Braun] to meet was always his apartment. Before that, it was at Hoffmann's place. They had their routine there, Hitler had his security there, it was a place he was used to. He never got used to the apartment he got us on the Widenmayerstraße.
Genius is mainly an affair of energy, and poetry is mainly an affair of genius; therefore a nation whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be imminent in poetry - and we have Shakespeare.