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

Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun.

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.

Metaphysics must be based on what exists, for it has the task of explicating it.

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

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

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.