Quote

With a clear sky, a bright sun, and a gentle breeze, you will have friends in plenty but let fortune frown, and the firmament be overcast, and then your friends will prove like the strings of the lute, of which you will tighten ten before you find one that will bear the stretch and keep the pitch.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

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Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Age: 52 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 22
Died: 1781
Died: February 15
Critic
Dramaturge
Journalist
Librarian
Literary Critic
Lyricist
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Theologian
Writer
Father of German Literature
Prove
Plenty
Frown
Clear
Ten
Firmament
Friends
Bear
Pitch
Keep
Sky
Stretch
Find
Fortune
Breeze
Like
Bears
Strings
Lute
Sun
Bright
Overcast
Friendship
Gentle
Tighten

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A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes
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Pure truth is for God alone.
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As the stag which the huntsman has hit flies through bush and brake, over stock and stone, thereby exhausting his strength but not expelling the deadly bullet from his body so does experience show that they who have troubled consciences run from place to place, but carry with them wherever they go their dangerous wounds.
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Suspicion follows close on mistrust.
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A single grateful thought toward heaven is the most perfect prayer.
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But how many moments are already past! Ah! who thinks of those that are past?
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Nothing under the sun is accidental, least of all that of which the intention is so clearly evident.
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Nothing under the sun is ever accidental.
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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 without sorrow. O the folly of expecting lasting felicity in a vale of tears, or a paradise in a ruined world.
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The real beggar is indeed the true and only king.
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Who cannot resolve upon a moment's notice To live his own life, he forever lives A slave to others.
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What education is to the individual, revelation is to the whole human race.
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The more we see the more we must be able to imagine, and the more we imagine, the more we must think we see.
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What education is to the individual man, revelation is to the human race. Education is revelation coming to the individual man, and revelation is education that has come, and is still coming to the human race.
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I know not whether there exists such a thing as a coin stamped with a pair of pinions but I wish this were the device which monarchs put upon their dollars and ducats, to show that riches make to themselves wings, and fly away.
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To look forward to pleasure is also a pleasure.
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For the will and not the gift makes the giver.
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