The thing that pleases is not always good and, helas, the good thing does not always please.

How frightening it is to have reached the height of human accomplishment in art that must forever borrow from life's abundance.

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.

The ramparts of Vienna are crumbling into the sand; no one wants to live so confined, however, the entire country is already surrounded by a Chinese wall!

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

Critics are reprimanded when they get sarcastic. How absurd! Is the torch of criticism supposed to shine without burning?