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.

What is the use of aesthetics if they can neither teach how to produce beauty nor how to appreciate it in good taste? It exists because it behooves rational human beings to provide reasons for their actions and assessments. Even if aesthetics are not the mathematics of beauty, they are the proof of the calculation.

It is the emotions to which one objects in Germany most of all.

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

Progress will always have as its recourse to exaggerate what it cannot surpass.

The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child's delight in bright pictures.

As youth lives in the future, so the adult lives in the past: No one rightly knows how to live in the present.