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

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.

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.

It's actually the spirit helping the spirit; it is the doctor, the bed, the potion.

The courts used to be, fair and square, the avengers of secular crimes; but nowadays they demand respect even for the criminal.

It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.

When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet's task to turn it into an audience.