What raises great poetry above all else--it is the entire person and also the entire world.

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

Mankind is getting smarter every day. Actually, it only seems so. At least we are making progress. We're progressing, to be sure, ever more deeply into the forest.

Austrian soldiers are like horses: brave but easily frightened.

Genius differs from talent not by the amount of original thoughts, but by making the latter fertile and by positioning them properly, in other words, by integrating everything into a whole, whereas talent produces only fragments, no matter how beautiful.

The real genres: good and bad.

If someone were to think that trees are made to support the sky, they would all seem too short.