Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age.

A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at five or six great men- yes, and then to get around them.

The poison by which the weaker nature is destroyed is strengthening to the strong individual and he does not call it poison.

In Bach there is still too much crude Christianity, crude Germanism, crude scholasticism; he stands on the threshold of European (modern) music, but he looks back from there to the Middle Ages.

Learning from one's enemies is the best way to love them, for it puts one into a grateful mood toward them.

Every fact and every work exercises a fresh persuasion over every age and every new species of man. History always enunciates new truths.

Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.