Why does the past look so enticing to us? For the same reason why from a distance a meadow with flowers looks like a flower bed.

History is the zoology of the human race.

I would love to be able to write a tragedy in my imagination--it would turn into a masterpiece.

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.

German diligence is actually endurance.

The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.

No spoon has yet destroyed a mouth, but the knife of war cuts portions that are hard to swallow. Perhaps the big mouths of the privileged are able to cope with them, but they dull the teeth of the little people and ruin their stomachs.