The sensible author writes for no other posterity than his own--that is, for his age--so as to be able even then to take pleasurein himself.

Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.

The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

To produce music is also in a sense to produce children.

Their usual mistaken premise is that they affirm some consensus among people, at least among tame peoples, concerning certain moral principles, and then conclude that these principles must be unconditionally binding also for you and me-or conversely, they see that among different peoples moral valuations are necessarily different and infer from this that no morality is binding-both of which are equally childish.

The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.

When art dresses itself in the most worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.