The nature of finite things is to have the seed of their passing-away as their essential being: the hour of their birth is the hour of their death.

Beauty and art pervade all the business of life like a kindly genius, brightly adorning our surroundings whether interior or exterior, mitigating the seriousness of existence and the complexities of the real life, extinguishing idleness in an entertaining fashion, and, where there is nothing good to be achieved, filling the place of vice better than vice itself.

The heart is everywhere, and each part of the organism is only the specialized force of the heart itself.

On the stage on which we are observing it, — Universal History — Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality.

The real is the rational and the rational is the real.

The sublime in art is the attempt to express the infinite without finding in the realm of phenomena any object which proves itself fitting for this representation.

Genuine tragedy is a case not of right against wrong but of right against right - two equally justified ethical principles embodied in people of unchangeable will.