For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

A single grateful thought toward heaven is the most perfect prayer.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

They make glorious shipwreck who are lost in seeking worlds.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

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 truth, which constitutes the worth of a man.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

For the will and not the gift makes the giver.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

If some things don't make you lose your sense of reason, then you have none to lose.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The most deadly fruit is borne by the hatred which one grafts on an extinguished friendship.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Absolute truth belongs to Thee alone.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

He who doesn't lose his wits over certain things has no wits to lose.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Let the devil catch you but by a single hair, and you are his forever.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

One can drink too much, but one never drinks enough.

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

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 is lost!

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing