Günther Oettinger

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

A great man is always willing to be little.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Mysteries are due to secrecy.

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

Do the thing we fear, and the death of fear is certain.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

It is your character, and your character alone, that will make your life happy or unhappy.