The voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course of events has given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens to remove it continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by that of matter.

A gloomy guest fits not a wedding feast.

Physical beauty is the sign of an interior beauty, a spiritual and moral beauty which is the basis, the principle, and the unity of the beautiful.

The Moor has done his work, the Moor may go.

Life did not present its sunny side to thee.

To be man's tender mate was woman born, and in obeying nature she best serves the purposes of heaven.

Every man stamps his value on himself... man is made great or small by his own will.