A book is quite a beautiful thing, even more so learning. Together, however, all they amount to is called book-learning.

If only it were God's will that printed and written materials have as much influence on the people as the princes and their censors fear! Considering the countless good books we have, the world would have changed for the better a long time ago.

Profundity easily turns into dullness and astuteness deteriorates into wit. Be guided by natural common sense and it will accommodate great and small.

Swear words and profanities are mere abbreviations of speech, similar to the abbreviations in writing.

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 manifestation of poetry in external life is formal perfection. True sentiment grows within, and art must represent internal phenomena externally.

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