The foot of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-day life, so that everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvelous, magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most glorious part thereof.
E. T. A. HoffmannThere are men from whom nature or some peculiar destiny has removed the cover beneath which we hide our own madness. They are likethin-skinned insects whose visible play of muscles seem to make them deformed, though in fact, everything soon turns to its normal shape again.
E. T. A. HoffmannIt is only in the morning that one should marry, read unfavourable reviews, make one's will, beat one's servants, and so forth.
E. T. A. HoffmannIs it not in the most absolute simplicity that real genius plies its pinions the most wonderfully?
E. T. A. Hoffmann