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.

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

The courts used to be, fair and square, the avengers of secular crimes; but nowadays they demand respect even for the criminal.

At certain times, men regard poetry merely as a bright flame, but to women it was, and always will be, a warm fire.

Someone who is reluctant to say what he needs to say, often ends up doing so with an insolence whose crassness is proportionate tohis fear, once he gathers the necessary courage.

The real genres: good and bad.

Prose talks and poetry sings.