Soon there will be nothing truly profound that is not achieved by everyone, and of the difficult things in this world only one will be left: simplicity.

It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.

In Germany, a certain artistic sense is fairly common, but the artist's sense is foreign there.

When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet's task to turn it into an audience.

Do you call the jewel blind, because your eye is?

This searching and doubting and vacillating where nothing is clear but the arrogance of quest. I, too, had such noble ideas when I was still a boy.

Boundless in your charity, but shrewd and cautious as a lender, you delight all those today whom you made beggars the day before.