The first indication of a young person's growing smarter is that he no longer understands the things which he used to consider quite intelligible and self-evident.

The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.

You ardently strive for freedom, and I do wish you were free--but, rather than for your sake, so that government won't be.

Transcendence: that which transcends experience.

Man lives two lives, woe, were it otherwise! One is seized by death, the other one, his honor, remains.

It's the misfortune of German authors that not a single one of them dares to expose his true character. Everyone thinks that he has to be better than he is.

Prose and poetry are as different as food and drink.