Reason exercises merely the function of preserving order, is, so to say, the police in the region of art. In life it is mostly a cold arithmetician summing up our follies.

In these times we fight for ideas and newspapers are our fortress.

Oh, what lies there are in kisses.

He who fears to venture as far as his heart urges and his reason permits, is a coward; he who ventures further than he intended to go, is a slave.

I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day.

I am no longer a divine biped. I am no longer the freest German after Goethe, as Ruge named me in healthier days. I am no longer the great hero No. 2, who was compared with the grape-crowned Dionysius, whilst my colleague No. 1 enjoyed the title of a Grand Ducal Weimarian Jupiter. I am no longer a joyous, somewhat corpulent Hellenist, laughing cheerfully down upon the melancholy Nazarenes. I am now a poor fatally-ill Jew, an emaciated picture of woe, an unhappy man.

With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches up the gaps in the structure of the universe.