Everyone is deceived in his hopes, cheated in his expectations. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

A burgher may acquire merit; by excessive efforts he may even educate his mind; but his personal qualities are lost, or worse than lost, let him struggle as he will. Since the nobleman, frequenting the society of the most polished, is compelled to give himself a polished manner; since this manner, neither door nor gate being shut against him, grows at last an unconstrained one; since, in court or camp, his figure, his person, are a part of his possessions, and it may be the most necessary part, — he has reason enough to put some value on them, and to show that he puts some.

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.