“ To see thus side by side birth and death, the coffin and the cradle, to see them and to realize them, to comprehend not with the eye of imagination, but with the bodily eye, at one moment these fearful opposites, was a hard trial to the spectators; the harder, the more utterly it had taken them by surprise. Ottilie alone stood contemplating the slumberer, whose features still retained their gentle sweet expression, with a kind of envy. The life of her soul was killed; why should the bodily life any longer drag on in weariness? ”

“ How can she endure to live? How shall she ever console herself, if she may not hope to make good that to Edward, of which, as the instrument of the most wonderful destiny, she has deprived him? And she can make it all good again by the passion, by the devotion with which she loves him. If love be able to bear all things, it is able to do yet more; it can restore all things; of myself at such a moment I may not think.
"Do you go quietly away, my dear Major; say to Edward that I consent to the separation; that I leave it to him, to you, and to Mittler, to settle whatever is to be done. ”

“ I have never uttered anything which I have not experienced, and which has not urged me to production. I have composed love-songs only when I have loved. How could I write songs of hatred without hating! And, between ourselves, I did not hate the French, although I thanked God that we were free from them. How could I, to whom culture and barbarism are alone of importance, hate a nation which is among the most cultivated of the earth, and to which I owe so great a part of my own cultivation? ”

“ The fate of the Architect is the strangest of all in this way. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter. The halls of kings owe their magnificence to him; but he has no enjoyment of them in their splendor. In the temple he draws a partition line between himself and the Holy of Holies; he may never more set his foot upon the steps which he has laid down for the heart-thrilling ceremonial, as the goldsmith may only adore from far off the monstrance whose enamel and whose jewels he has himself set together. ”

“ That confidence in oneself, that activity in the present, the pure worship of the gods as ancestors and the admiration of them quasi as artistic creations only, resignation to an all-powerful fate, the yearning for future fame, itself dependent upon activities in this world—all these belonging necessarily together, constitute such an inseparable whole that they form a condition of human existence planned by Nature herself. In the highest moment of happiness, as well as in the deepest of sacrifice, even of destruction, we are always conscious of an indestructible well-being. ”

“ The slight hints which frequently escaped her had no effect upon Ottilie; for Ottilie had been assured by Edward that Charlotte was devoted to the Captain, that Charlotte herself wished for a separation, and that he was at this moment considering the readiest means by which it could be brought about.
Ottilie, led by the sense of her own innocence along the road to the happiness for which she longed, lived only for Edward. Strengthened by her love for him in all good, more light and happy in her work for his sake, and more frank and open toward others, she found herself in a heaven upon earth. ”

“ Affinities begin really to interest only when they bring about separations."
"What!" cried Charlotte, "is that miserable word, which unhappily we hear so often now-a-days in the world; is that to be found in nature's lessons too?"
"Most certainly," answered Edward; "the title with which chemists were supposed to be most honorably distinguished was, artists of separation."
"It is not so any more," replied Charlotte; "and it is well that it is not. It is a higher art, and it is a higher merit, to unite. An artist of union is what we should welcome in every province of the universe. ”

“ They tried to pacify him, but it was in vain. "Whoever strikes at marriage," he cried;—"whoever, either by word or act, undermines this, the foundation of all moral society, that man has to settle with me, and if I cannot become his master, I take care to settle myself out of his way. Marriage is the beginning and the end of all culture. It makes the savage mild; and the most cultivated has no better opportunity for displaying his gentleness. Indissoluble it must be, because it brings so much happiness that what small exceptional unhappiness it may bring counts for nothing in the balance. ”

“ Shakespeare mates himself with the world-spirit; like it he pervades the world; to neither is anything concealed; but if it is the function of the world-spirit to maintain secrecy before, indeed often after, the event, it is the poet's aim to divulge the secret and make us confidants before the deed, or at least during its occurrence. The vicious man of power, well-meaning mediocrity, the passionate enthusiast, the calmly reflective character, all wear their hearts upon their sleeves, often contrary to all likelihood; every one is inclined to talk, to be loquacious. ”

“ As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.
Mankind is like the Red Sea; the staff has scarcely parted the waves asunder before they flow together again. Thoughts come back; beliefs persist; facts pass by never to return.
Of all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life the best.
We readily bow to antiquity, but not to posterity. It is only a father that does not grudge talent to his son. ”

“ They point to something far away from us—gone from us; and they remind me how difficult it is to pay right honor to the present. If we think how many people we have seen and known, and consider how little we have been to them and how little they have been to us, it is no very pleasant reflection. We have met a man of genius without having enjoyed much with him—a learned man without having learnt from him—a traveler without having been instructed,—a man to love without having shown him any kindness. ”

“ When one is old one thinks of worldly matters otherwise than when one is young. Thus I cannot but think that the demons, to teaze and make sport with men, have placed among them single figures, which are so alluring that every one strives after them, and so great that nobody reaches them. Thus they set up Raffael, with whom thought and act were equally perfect; some distinguished followers have approached him, but none have equalled him. Thus, too, they set up Mozart as something unattainable in music; and thus Shakespeare in poetry. ”

“ I who have been the innocent cause of it all, how am I ever to console myself? By my own importunity I prevailed on Charlotte to write to you to stay with us; and Ottilie followed in consequence. We have had no more control over what ensued out of this, but we have the power to make it innocuous; to guide the new circumstances to our own happiness. Can you turn away your eyes from the fair and beautiful prospects which I open to us? Can you insist to me, can you insist to us all, on a wretched renunciation of them? Do you think it possible? Is it possible? ”

“ We can put it all together, and so make a charmingly complete work of it."
"Well, then, I will acknowledge openly," answered Charlotte, with some impatience, "my feeling is against this plan. I have an instinct which tells me no good will come of it."
"You women are invincible in this way," replied Edward. "You are so sensible, that there is no answering you, then so affectionate, that one is glad to give way to you; full of feelings, which one cannot wound, and full of forebodings, which terrify one." ”

“ If we rate Shakespeare as one of the greatest poets, we acknowledge at the same time that it has been vouchsafed to few to discern the world as he did: to few, in expressing their inward feelings of the world, to give the reader a more realizing sense of it. It becomes thoroughly transparent to us; we find ourselves suddenly the confidants of virtue and vice, of greatness and insignificance, of nobility and depravity—all this, and more, through the simplest means. ”

“ The works of the poets of past ages appear to have interested him at first as documents of ancient languages and literature, later as witnesses for the fine arts. It is all the more wonderful and gratifying when he himself appears as a poet, as an able, unmistakable one, in his description of statues and in almost all of his later writings. He sees with his eyes, he grasps with his mind, works indescribable, and yet he feels an irresistible impulse to master them by the spoken and the written word. ”

“ Ottilie's own personal position with the Architect was as pure and unconscious as possible. His agreeable presence, and his industrious nature, had charmed and entertained her, as the presence of an elder brother might. Her feelings for him remained at the calm unimpassioned level of blood relationship. For in her heart there was no room for more; it was filled to overflowing with love for Edward; only God, who interpenetrates all things, could share with him the possession of that heart. ”

“ But if they rise and pass beyond the sphere of ordinary wants, common-sense is no longer sufficient; it is a genius no more, and humanity enters on the region of error.
There is no piece of foolishness but it can be corrected by intelligence or accident; no piece of wisdom but it can miscarry by lack of intelligence or by accident.
Justice insists on obligation, law on decorum. Justice weighs and decides, law superintends and orders. Justice refers to the individual, law to society.
The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge. ”

“ A great work limits us for the moment, because we feel it above our powers; and only in so far as we afterward incorporate it with our culture, and make it part of our mind and heart, does it become a dear and worthy object.
There are many things in the world that are at once good and excellent, but they do not come into contact.
When men have to do with women, they get spun off like a distaff.
It may well be that a man is at times horribly threshed by misfortunes, public and private: but the reckless flail of Fate, when it beats the rich sheaves, crushes only the straw ”

“ Individuality seems to be all her aim, and she cares naught for individuals. She is always building and always destroying, and her work-shop is not to be approached.
Nature lives in her children only, and the mother, where is she? She is the sole artist—out of the simplest materials the greatest diversity; attaining, with no trace of effort, the finest perfection, the closest precision, always softly veiled. Each of her works has an essence of its own; every shape that she takes is in idea utterly isolated; and yet all forms one.
She plays a drama ”

“ He tried to help himself with a kind of humor which, however, being without love, was also without its usual grace.
Over all such trials Charlotte found assistance to rise in her own inward feelings. She knew her own determination. Her own affection, fair and noble as it was, she would utterly renounce.
And sorely she longed to go to the assistance of the other two. Separation, she knew well, would not alone suffice to heal so deep a wound. She resolved that she would speak openly about it to Ottilie herself. But she could not do it. The recollection of her own weakness stood in her way. ”

“ Edward cried, as he approached.
"I do not like your grand festivities," answered he; "but I am come today to keep my friend's birthday with you quietly."
"How are you able to find time enough?" asked Edward, with a laugh.
"My visit, if you can value it, you owe to an observation which I made yesterday. I was spending a right happy afternoon in a house where I had established peace, and then I heard that a birthday was being kept here. Now this is what I call selfish, after all, said I to myself: you will only enjoy yourself with those whose broken peace you have mended. ”

“ It will be my happiness to watch the embarrassments of the little creatures as they grow; to cheer them in their childish sorrows, and guide them back with a light hand out of their little aberrations. The fortunate is not the person to be of help to the unfortunate; it is in the nature of man to require ever more and more of himself and others, the more he has received. ”

“ Goethe mentioned at table that he had received a visit from Baron Carl Von Spiegel, and that he had been pleased with him beyond measure.
"He is a very fine young man," said Goethe; "in his mien and manners he has something by which the nobleman is seen at once. He could as little dissemble his descent as any one could deny a higher intellect; for birth and intellect both give him who once possesses them a stamp which no incognito can conceal. Like beauty, these are powers which one cannot approach without feeling that they are of a higher nature." ”

“ I soon left behind me German literature, and the study of it, and turned my thoughts to life and to production. So on and on I went in my own natural development, and on and on I fashioned the productions of epoch after epoch. And at every step of life and development, my standard of excellence was not much higher than what at such step I was able to attain. But had I been born an Englishman, and had all those numerous masterpieces been brought before me in all their power, at my first dawn of youthful consciousness, they would have overpowered me, and I should not have known what to do. ”

“ After the Major had left her, Charlotte sat on, buried in her own reflections; but it was only for a few minutes. Ottilie suddenly raised herself from her lap, and looked full with her large eyes in her friend's face. Then she got up from off the ground, and stood upright before her.
"This is the second time," began the noble girl, with an irresistible solemnity of manner, "this is the second time that the same thing has happened to me. You once said to me that similar things often befall people more than once in their lives in a similar way, and if they do, it is always at important moments. ”

“ A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way. A calm eye, a silent method, in all seasons of the year, and at every hour, to do exactly what has then to be done, is required of no one perhaps more than of a gardener. These qualities the good man possessed in an eminent degree, and it was on that account that Ottilie liked so well to work with him; but for some time past he had not found himself able to exercise his peculiar talent with any pleasure to himself. ”

“ The Major attempted to say something of Charlotte's worth, and Edward's long-standing attachment to her; but the latter hastily interrupted him. "We committed ourselves to a foolish thing, that I see all too clearly. Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires. Woe to him who, either by circumstances or by his own infatuation, is induced to grasp at anything before him or behind him. We have done a foolish thing. ”

“ But now conceive a city like Paris, where the highest talents of a great kingdom are all assembled in a single spot, and by daily intercourse, strife, and emulation, mutually instruct and advance each other; where the best works, both of nature and art, from all the kingdoms of the earth, are open to daily inspection; conceive this metropolis of the world, I say, where every walk over a bridge or across a square recalls some mighty past, and where some historical event is connected with every corner of a street. ”

“ He had pictured the whole thing to himself not as possible, but as already concluded; all parties had only to resolve on what they all wished; there would be no difficulty in obtaining a separation; the marriages should follow as soon after as possible, and Edward could travel with Ottilie.
Of all the pleasant things which imagination pictures to us, perhaps there is none more charming than when lovers and young married people look forward to enjoying their new relation to each other in a fresh, new world, and test the endurance of the bond between them in so many changing circumstances. ”

“ In troubled cases those must work and help who see the clearest—this time it is I. Dear, dearest Edward! listen to me—can you propose to me that now at once I shall renounce my happiness! renounce my fairest rights! renounce you!"
"Who says that?" replied Edward, with some embarrassment.
"You, yourself," answered Charlotte; "in determining to keep Ottilie here, are you not acknowledging everything which must arise out of it? I will urge nothing on you—but if you cannot conquer yourself, at least you will not be able much longer to deceive yourself." ”

“ In a certain sense the poet lived in his imagination, just as the historian lived in the political, and the investigator in the natural world. All held fast to the nearest, the true, the actual, and even the pictures of their fantasy have bone and marrow. Man, and whatever was human, was considered of the highest value, and all his inner and external relations to the world were represented with the same great intelligence with which they were observed. Feeling and observation had not been separated; that almost incurable breach in the healthy power of man had not yet occurred. ”