Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful toneis silenced.

They are miserly, the princes of Austria, you need not grieve about it; they may not donate anything, but they allow themselves tobe fleeced, the good lords.

Man will return to his origins. Goethe has finally become as squiggly as the city of his fathers.

A cure by regression is homeopathic, like healing the damage done by ministers and ignorance with stupidity and Jesuits.

The thing that pleases is not always good and, helas, the good thing does not always please.

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

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.