Adalbert Stifter Quotes

#1. Everything that now exists, no matter how great and good it is, lasts for a time, fulfills a purpose, and then passes on. And so it will be with all the works of art that now exist; an eternal veil of forgetfulness will lie over them, just as there is now over those things that came before.

Adalbert Stifter

#2. Everyone is out for himself. Not everyone will say so but everyone behaves so. And those that don't say so often behave in an even more grossly selfish way.

Adalbert Stifter

#3. Everything that God sends us is beautiful, even though we may not understand it - and we only need to give it some proper thought to see that what God gives is just sheer happiness; the suffering is what we add to it.

Adalbert Stifter

#4. Here for example the beautiful silver mirror of a river swells, a boy falls in, the water ripples sweetly around his locks, he sinks - and after a short while the silver mirror swells as before.

Adalbert Stifter

#5. My heart was full and uplifted; it seemed that in my soul the question arose whether such things as Art, literature, science encompassed and completed life or whether there was still something in the distance which encompassed it even more completely and filled it with a far greater happiness.

Adalbert Stifter

#6. In the old pieces of furniture almost as in the old paintings, dwells the charm of the past, of the faded which becomes stronger in a man when he reaches an advanced age.

Adalbert Stifter