From whatever you wish to know and measure you must take your leave, at least for a time. Only when you have left the town can yousee how high its towers rise above the houses.

There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic.

That the world is not the embodiment of an eternal rationality can be conclusively proved by the fact that the piece of the worldthat we know--I mean our human reason--is not so very rational. And if it is not eternally and completely wise and rational, then the rest of the world will not be either; here the conclusion a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum applies, and does so with decisive force.

The grand style follows suit with all great passion. It disdains to please, it forgets to persuade. It commands. It wills.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?