When we interpret nature, we refer phenomena that are rarely entirely unintelligible back to something that actually exists, but is equally unintelligible.

Bunglers and pedants judge art according to genre; they approve of this and dismiss that genre, but instead of genres, the open-minded connoisseur appreciates only individual works.

Isn't it awful that cold feet make for a cold imagination and that a pair of woollen socks induce good thoughts!

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

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

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.

Trying to conceal a crime is like burying a seed in the ground.