Let the famous not denounce fame. Far from being empty and meaningless, it fills those it touches with divine power.

Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun.

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

Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists.

The present is never poetic as it serves necessity, necessity, however, is prosaic.

Why does the past look so enticing to us? For the same reason why from a distance a meadow with flowers looks like a flower bed.

Transcendence: that which transcends experience.