Illusion is brief, but repentance is long.

For the world is only governed by self-interest.

Peace is rarely denied to the peaceful.

The iron chain and the silken cord are both equally bonds.

Be noble minded! Our own heart, and not other men's opinions of us, forms our true honor.

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.

No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.