Quotes from Berthold Auerbach

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

To acquire money requires valor, to keep money requires prudence, and to spend money well is an art.

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.

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.

Liberty is from God; liberties, from the devil.

Imagination is the mightiest despot.

Of all afflictions, the worst is self contempt.

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Of all afflictions, the worst is self-contempt.

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

It is only when one is thoroughly true that there can be purity and freedom. Falsehood always punishes itself.

Judaism lives not in an abstract creed, but in its institutions.

Years teach us more than books.

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

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

All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.

Weak men are easily put out of humor. Oil freezes quicker than water.

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

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

The world is the same everywhere.

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

Why has no religion this command before all others: Thou shalt work?

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

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