... hitherto we have been permitted to seek beauty only in the morally good - a fact which sufficiently accounts for our having found so little of it and having had to seek about for imaginary beauties without backbone! - As surely as the wicked enjoy a hundred kinds of happiness of which the virtuous have no inkling, so too they possess a hundred kinds of beauty; and many of them have not yet been discovered.

The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm: usually because they could not walk.

Pity aims just as little at the pleasure of others as malice at the pain of others Per-Se.

Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.

Jesus died too soon. If he had lived to my age he would have repudiated his doctrine.

The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity. To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task.

Our shortcomings are the eyes with which we see the ideal.