Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Quotes

41 quotes in 448 categories

• The more we see the more we must be able to imagine, and the more we imagine, the more we must think we see.
• Yesterday I lived, today I suffer, tomorrow I die; but I still think fondly, today and tomorrow, of yesterday.
• He who doesn't lose his wits over certain things has no wits to lose.
• The lion is ashamed, it's true, when he hunts with the fox.
• Why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world? Why should I not come back as often as I am…
• Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy.
• When the heart dares to speak, it needs no preparation.
• A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes
• Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much…
• The most deadly fruit is borne by the hatred which one grafts on an extinguished friendship
• It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the…
• Absolute truth belongs to Thee alone.
• It is not children only that one feeds with fairy tales.
• Pleasures, riches, honor and joy are sure to have care, disgrace, adversity and affliction in their train. There is no pleasure without pain, no joy…
• It's easier to swoon in pious dreams Than do good actions.
• We moderns do not believe in demigods, but our smallest hero we expect to feel and act as a demigod.
• To look forward to pleasure is also a pleasure.
• The searcher's eye Not seldom finds more than he wished to find.
• Who cannot resolve upon a moment's notice To live his own life, he forever lives A slave to others.
• The superstition in which we grew up, Though we may recognize it, does not lose Its power over us.-Not all are free Who make mock…

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